how many jews survived the holocaust
[59][60][65], Most of these books are written in Yiddish or Hebrew, while some also include sections in English or other languages, depending on where they were published. Other survivors returned to their original homes to look for relatives or gather news and information about them, hoping for a reunion or at least the certainty of knowing if a loved one had perished. [2], The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum gives a broader definition of Holocaust survivors: "The Museum honors any persons as survivors, Jewish or non-Jewish, who were displaced, persecuted, or discriminated against due to the racial, religious, ethnic, social, and political policies of the Nazis and their collaborators between 1933 and 1945. In 2020, it represented 55 organizations and a survivor population whose average was 84. The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, [a] was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. At first, these were mainly for the purpose of prosecuting war criminals and often only many years later, for the sake of recounting their experiences to help process the traumatic events that they had suffered, or for the historical record and educational purposes.[58][61]. persons actually or believed to be active in underground resistance, persons killed in reprisal for some actual or perceived resistance activity carried out by someone else, losses due to so-called collateral damage in actual military operations. The magnitude is clear. We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. On May 14, 1948, one of the leading voices for a Jewish homeland, David Ben-Gurion, announced the formation of the State of Israel. Though the two institutions have different estimates, if you average the total number of Jews each says were murdered, the result is the commonly used figure of six million. (Holocaust) The Holocaust prisoners were starved and if they didn't die of starvation, they were taken to the camps. [20][21], Holocaust survivors suffered from the war years and afterwards in many different ways, physically, mentally and spiritually.[56]. Many were killed in the Holocaust, and others moved to Israel or elsewhere. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. [7][29], In the following decades, a concerted effort was made to record the memories and testimonials of survivors for posterity. In the immediate post-war period, officials of the DP camps and organizations providing relief to the survivors conducted interviews with survivors primarily for the purposes of providing physical assistance and assisting with relocation. The first groups of survivors in the DP camps were joined by Jewish refugees from central and eastern Europe, fleeing to the British and American occupation zones in Germany as post-war conditions worsened in the east. The International Red Cross and Jewish relief organizations set up tracing services to support these searches, but inquiries often took a long time because of the difficulties in communications, and the displacement of millions of people by the conflict, the Nazi's policies of deportation and destruction, and the mass relocations of populations in central and eastern Europe. German units conducted those operations with an ideologically driven and willful disregard for civilian life. On July 26, the ghetto, enclosing 43,000. This silent connection is the tacit assent, in the families of Holocaust survivors, not to discuss the trauma of the parent and to disconnect it from the daily life of the family. On average, teens correctly answer slightly fewer questions than U.S. adults do (1.8 vs. 2.2, on average). When 150 Jews returned to the city, people living there feared that hundreds more would come back to reclaim their houses and belongings. The first Yizkor books were published in the United States, mainly in Yiddish, the mother tongue of the landsmanschaften and Holocaust survivors. The Holocaust is the best documented case of genocide. By 1946, an estimated 250,000 displaced Jewish survivors about 185,000 in Germany, 45,000 in Austria, and 20,000 in Italy were housed in hundreds of refugee centers and DP camps administered by the militaries of the United States, Great Britain and France, and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). When people tried to return to their homes from camps or hiding places, they found that, in many cases, their homes had been looted or taken over by others. As Germany marks 1,700 years of Jewish life, DW looks back at key . And behind each number are individuals whose hopes and dreams were destroyed. Survivors also had no possessions. (Mackay 6) The Holocaust was a murder of 6 million Jewish people. During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted and killed other groups, including at times their children, because of their perceived racial and biological inferiority: Roma (Gypsies), Germans with disabilities, and some of the Slavic peoples (especially Poles and Russians). Many of the Jews who were liberated from camps died in the months . Click here to watch more panels, interviews, and speeches from the 2023 Kyiv Jewish Forum. With regard to the Polish and Soviet civilian figures, at this time there are not sufficient demographic tools to enable historians to distinguish between: Virtually all deaths of Soviet, Polish, and Serb civilians during the course of military and anti-partisan operations had, however, a racist component. [49][50], In the twenty first century, the development of DNA testing for genealogical purposes has sometimes provided essential information to people trying to find relatives from whom they were separated during the Holocaust, or to recover their Jewish identity, especially Jewish children who were hidden or adopted by non-Jewish families during the war. These searches frequently ended in heartbreak parents discovered that their child had been killed or had gone missing and could not be found. After a rumor spread that Jews had killed a Polish boy to use his blood in religious rituals, a mob attacked the group of survivors. The rioters killed 41 people and wounded 50 more. Despite this, calculating the exact numbers of individuals who were killed as the result of Nazi policies is an impossible task. Many, however, had to resort to notices in newspapers, tracing services, and survivor registries in the hope of finding their children. Holocaust survivors, the passengers from the Exodus, DPs from central Europe, and Jewish detainees from British detention camps on Cyprus are welcomed to the Jewish homeland. Among these groups were Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and gay men. Each survivor's story i [25], Local Jewish committees in Europe tried to register the living and account for the dead. To accurately estimate the extent of human losses, scholars, Jewish organizations, and governmental agencies since the 1940s have relied on a variety of different records, such as census reports, captured German and Axis archives, and postwar investigations, to compile these statistics. Some survivors returned to their countries of origin while others sought to leave Europe by immigrating to Palestine or other countries.[20][21]. These included social welfare and psychological care, reparations and restitution for the persecution, slave labor and property losses which they had suffered, the restoration of looted books, works of art and other stolen property to their rightful owners, the collection of witness and survivor testimonies, the memorialization of murdered family members and destroyed communities, and care for disabled and aging survivors. Some survivors contacted the Red Cross and other organizations who were collating lists of survivors, such as the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which established a Central Tracing Bureau to help survivors locate relatives who had survived the concentration camps. In 1981, around 6,000 Holocaust survivors gathered in Jerusalem for the first World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. As news of the Kielce pogrom spread, Jews began to flee from Poland, perceiving that there was no viable future for them there, and this pattern of post-war anti-Jewish violence repeated itself in other countries such as Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine. News of the Kielce pogrom spread rapidly, and Jews realized that there was no future for them in Poland. A copy was among the records captured by the US Army in 1945. With regard to the number of Jews who died in the Holocaust, best estimates for the breakdown of Jewish loss according to location of death follow: There is no single wartime document that contains the above cited estimates of Jewish deaths. Current estimates might change as new documents are discovered or as historians arrive at a more precise understanding of the events. Though fragmentary, these sources provide essential figures from which to make calculations. [47], Following the war, Jewish parents often spent months and years searching for the children they had sent into hiding. Jewish organizations and relatives had to struggle to recover these children, including custody battles in the courts. The liberators were unprepared for what they found but did their best to help the survivors. In fortunate cases, they found their children were still with the original rescuer. Interviews were also conducted for the purpose of gathering evidence about war crimes and for the historical record. & Hirsch, S. (2003). Various factors combined to create a different reality than in the other countries under German occupation. [1][58], The number of memoirs that were published increased gradually from the 1970s onwards, indicating both the increasing need and psychological ability of survivors to relate their experiences, as well as a growing public interest in the Holocaust driven by events such as the capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961, the existential threats to Jews presented by the Six-Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the broadcasting in many countries of the television documentary series "Holocaust" in 1978, and the establishment of new Holocaust memorial centers and memorials, such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Once these aims had largely been met by the early 1950s, the organization was disbanded. After this, Jewish refugee ships freely landed in the seaports of the new nation. The totals for all countries show that nearly two-thirds of all Jews in Europe were killed during the Holocaust. [61] By the end of the twentieth century, Holocaust memoirs had been written by Jews not only in Yiddish, but also other languages including Hebrew, English, French, Italian, Polish and Russian. Their experiences, memories and understanding of the terrible events they had suffered as child victims of the Nazis and their accomplices was given little consideration. From the later 1970s, there was a decline in the number of collective memorial books but an increase in the number of survivors' personal memoirs. Political life rejuvenated and a leading role was taken by the Zionist movement, with most of the Jewish DPs declaring their intention of moving to a Jewish state in Palestine. Liberation itself was extremely difficult for many survivors and the transition to freedom from the terror, brutality and starvation they had just endured was frequently traumatic: As Allied forces fought their way across Europe and captured areas that had been occupied by the Germans, they discovered the Nazi concentration and extermination camps. One such early compilation was called "Sharit Ha-Platah" (Surviving Remnant), published in 1946 in several volumes with the names of tens of thousands of Jews who survived the Holocaust, collected mainly by Abraham Klausner, a United States Army chaplain who visited many of the Displaced Persons camps in southern Germany and gathered lists of the people there, subsequently adding additional names from other areas. [68] These were among the first of the recorded testimonies of the survivors Holocaust experiences. Yogi Mayer, a teacher and sports instructor who had escaped Nazi Germany in 1939, was a leading light in the Primrose Club, giving a lifeline to hundreds of young camp survivors who arrived in the UK in 1945. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, more than a million Soviet Jews fled eastward into the interior. Others went to Western countries as restrictions were eased and opportunities for them to emigrate arose. The word Holocaust is derived from the Greek holokauston, a translation of the Hebrew word olah, meaning a burnt sacrifice offered whole to God. Some 140,000 Holocaust survivors entered Israel during the next few years. Finally, the United Nations voted to divide Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state. View the list of all donors. The passengers are forcibly transferred to British ships and deported back to their port of origin in France. Thus, for example, in western Europe, around three quarters of the pre-war Jewish population survived the Holocaust in Italy and France, about half survived in Belgium, while only a quarter of the pre-war Jewish population survived in the Netherlands. When they were found by relatives or Jewish organizations, they were usually afraid, and resistant to leave the only caregivers they remembered. Ultimately, the British take the refugees to Hamburg, Germany, and forcibly return them to DP camps. [37][38][39][40], In Israel, where many Holocaust survivors emigrated, some relatives reunited after encountering each other by chance. Their presence has been an invaluable asset, and their contributions vital . The camp facilities were very poor, and many survivors were suffering from severe physical and psychological problems. Over 5 million of the 6 million Jews were killed in gas tanks at the camps. The United States also changed its immigration policy to allow more Jewish refugees to enter. [75], In the 1970s and 80s, small groups of these survivors, now adults, began to form in a number of communities worldwide to deal with their painful pasts in safe and understanding environments. By 1946, there were an estimated 250,000 Jewish displaced persons, of whom 185,000 were in Germany, 45,000 in Austria, and about 20,000 in Italy. The largest anti-Jewish pogrom occurred in July 1946 in Kielce, a city in southeastern Poland, when rioters killed 41 people and wounded 50 more. Notice that Poland by far lost the largest number (three million), with the Soviet Union having lost the second most (one million). [13] Two-thirds survived in the Soviet Union. Most survivors sought to leave Europe and build new lives elsewhere. For most, hiding was a difficult decision that involved extraordinary risks. Counting victims is important for research and to understand the magnitude of the crimes. After most survivors in the DP camps had immigrated to other countries or resettled, the Central Committee of She'arit Hapleta disbanded in December 1950 and the organization dissolved itself in the British Zone of Germany in August 1951.[21][27]. About 500 Danish Jews were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Robert L. Hilliard, "Surviving the Americans: The Continued Struggle of the Jews After Liberation" (New York: Fossion, P., Rejas, M., Servais, L., Pelc, I. However, for many years after the war, many survivors felt that they could not describe their experiences to those who had not lived through the Holocaust. For example, some have become involved in activities to commemorate the lives of people and ways of life of communities that were wiped out during the Holocaust. Fhrenwald, the last functioning DP camp closed in 1957. Washington, DC 20024-2126 The term "Sh'erit ha-Pletah" is thus usually used in reference to Jewish refugees and displaced persons in the period after the war from 1945 to about 1950. Many had to struggle to rediscover their real identities. The largest anti-Jewish pogrom took place in July 1946 in Kielce, a city in southeastern Poland. The single most important thing to keep in mind when attempting to document numbers of victims of the Holocaust is that no one master list of those who perished exists anywhere in the world. [88], The Holocaust Survivor Children: Missing Identity website addresses the issue of child survivors still hoping to find relatives or people who can tell them about their parents and family, and others who hope to find out basic information about themselves such as their original names, dates and place of birth, and parents names, based on a photograph of themselves as a child.[47][48]. The French reject the British demand to land the passengers. Many survivors ended up in displaced persons' (DP) camps set up in western Europe under Allied military occupation at the sites of former concentration camps . Descendants of survivors were also recognized as having been deeply affected by their families histories. It was one of the highest percentages in Europe. These estimates are calculated from wartime reports generated by those who implemented Nazi population policy, and postwar demographic studies on population loss during World War II. Genealogy can help rebuild them", " : ", "More Than a Memorial: The Evolution of Yad Vashem", "Holocaust Survivors on 'Pilgrimage of Rememberance[sic]', "Center of Organization of Holocaust Survivors in Israel", "Children of Holocaust Survivors Hold First International Conclave", "Over 1,700 Children of Holocaust Survivors Hold First World Meeting", "Benjamin Meed, 88, Organized Holocaust Survivors", "Ronald Reagan: Remarks to the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors", "International Center on Nazi Persecution", "Registry of Survivors Museum of Jewish Heritage", "Ancestry search may help you find relatives displaced by the Holocaust", "Aging Holocaust Survivors: An Evolution of Understanding", Resources for Holocaust Survivors and Their Families (US and international), A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust: Survivors, Amcha, the Israeli Center for Psychological and Social Support for Holocaust Survivors and the Second Generation, Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust & Descendants, The Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, Telling Their Stories Holocaust Survivors and Refugees, List of major perpetrators of the Holocaust, Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Holocaust_survivors&oldid=1139986370, Pages containing links to subscription-only content, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 17 February 2023, at 21:38. Many Jews tried to enter Palestine without legal papers, and when caught some were held in camps on the island of Cyprus, while others were deported back to Germany. Camp papers like Undzer Shtimme ("Our Voice"), published in Hohne Camp (Bergen-Belsen), and Undzer Hofenung ("Our Hope"), published in Eschwege camp, (Kassel) carried the first eyewitness accounts of Jewish experiences under Nazi rule, and one of the first publications on the Holocaust, Fuhn Letsn Khurbn, ("About the Recent Destruction"), was produced by DP camp members, and was eventually distributed around world. At first, many countries continued their old immigration policies, which greatly limited the number of refugees they would accept. Because the Nazis advocated killing children of unwanted groups, childrenparticularly Jewish and Romani childrenwere especially vulnerable in the era of the Holocaust. For example, in November 1979, the First Conference on Children of Holocaust Survivors was held, and resulted in the establishment of support groups all over the United States. Early in 1948, the British began withdrawing from Palestine. Anti-semitism was prevalent to at least some extent throughout Europe at the time. Harrison's report underscores the plight of Jewish DPs and leads to improved conditions in the camps. Nonetheless, many survivors drew on inner strength and learned to cope, restored their lives, moved to a new place, started a family and developed successful careers. Calculating the numbers of individuals who were killed as the result of Nazi policies is a difficult task. Of the 9.4 million or so European Jews prior to the Holocaust, only 3.4 million survived. This was expressed, among other ways, in the emotional and mental trauma of feeling that they were on a "different planet" that they could not share with others; that they had not or could not process the mourning for their murdered loved ones because at the time they were consumed with the effort required for survival; and many experienced guilt that they had survived when others had not. 4. The organization began holding annual conference in cities the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel. The Survivors For the survivors, returning to life as it had been before the Holocaust was impossible. [47], The Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Holocaust Survivors, created in 1981 by the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors to document the experiences of survivors and assist survivors and their families trying to trace missing relatives and friends, includes over 200,000 records related to survivors and their families from around the world. Still, according to various estimates, about 80 percent of the roughly 45,000 Jews in Italy survived the war because Italy did not abandon them. In 2010 it was recognized by the government as the representative organization for the entire survivor population in Israel. For decades after the war, in response to inquiries, the main tasks of ITS were determining the fates of victims of Nazi persecution and searching for missing people. [18], Nearly 300,000 Polish Jews fled to Soviet-occupied Poland and the interior of the Soviet Union between the start of the war in September 1939 and the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Photo credit: Yad Vashem Photo Archives. There were not many Jews who survived this nightmare. [20], Most of these refugees gathered in displaced persons camps in the British, French and American occupation zones of Germany, and in Austria and Italy. Prewar estimates for the latest year available (1937-1941). [10] In eastern and south-eastern Europe, most of Bulgaria's Jews survived the war,[11] as well as 60% of Jews in Romania[12] and nearly 30% of the Jewish population in Hungary. However, in many camps, the Allied soldiers found hundreds or even thousands of weak and starving survivors. [9][29][30][31][32], The DP camps were created as temporary centers for facilitating the resettlement of the homeless Jewish refugees and to take care of immediate humanitarian needs, but they also became temporary communities where survivors began to rebuild their lives. Some survivors began to publish memoirs immediately after the war ended, feeling a need to write about their experiences, and about a dozen or so survivors' memoirs were published each year during the first two decades after the Holocaust, notwithstanding a general public that was largely indifferent to reading them. In many cases, survivors searched all their lives for family members, without learning of their fates. What were some similarities between racism in Nazi Germany and in the United States, 1920s-1940s? These voyages were conducted under dangerous conditions during the war, with hundreds of lives lost at sea. French Jews were amongst the first to establish an institute devoted to documentation of the Holocaust at the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation. [1][58] While historians and survivors themselves are aware that the retelling of experiences is subjective to the source of information and sharpness of memory, they are recognized as collectively having "a firm core of shared memory" and the main substance of the accounts does not negate minor contradictions and inaccuracies in some of the details. Great Britain's scandalous treatment of Jewish refugees added to international pressures for a homeland for the Jewish people. The Germans were back again on June 27, 1941 and unleashed a deadly wave of violence against Jews, murdering 7,000 over the course of the first two weeks. [35][29], For children who had been hidden to escape the Nazis, more was often at stake than simply finding or being found by relatives. The term "Holocaust survivor" applies to Jews who lived through the mass exterminations which were carried out by the Nazis. While no precise numbers are likely to ever be determined, after 70 years of research and increasingly open archives, these ranges are likely not to change dramatically in the years ahead. The Allies fought only the World War. Furthermore, survivors often found themselves in the same camps as German prisoners and Nazi collaborators, who had been their tormentors until just recently, along with larger number of freed non-Jewish forced laborers, and ethnic German refugees fleeing the Soviet army, and there were frequent incidents of anti-Jewish violence.