2 Numbers Which Reveal the Overwhelming Level of Human Devastation Wrought by the Holocaust

Consider the True Levels of Death Inflicted by the Nazis on this International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Auschwitz, a Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

Click here to check out the first 30 Installments - Volume I - in this series on Antisemitism and Culture. Among the most important pieces from this first wave:

1. What It Means When the Leader of the Republican Party Dines With THREE Antisemites

2. What Causes Someone to Be an Antisemite?

3. 4 Stupid Reasons People Don't Take Antisemitism as Seriously as They Should

4. Is Qatar the Most Terrible State in the Middle East? Or Is Iran Worse?

5. How the Bible Reveals the 3 Types of Antisemites

6. 7 Reasons This Christian Hippie Became a Zealot Against Jew Hatred

7. What Zionism Means to Me Today

8. Why This Bible Thumper Is Going to Keep Using Plenty of Profanity

9. The Torah Should Be the Moral Foundation for All

10. How Multi-Faith Mysticism & Maimonides Can Bring Peace to Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Everyone

This is the sixth installment in Volume II, intended as another 30 installments exploring the many manifestations of Jew Hatred and the issues surrounding it in America and globally. See the previous installments in this collection below.

1. Martin Luther King, Jr: An American Hero and Courageous Zionist Voice

2. Talking to These Students Gave Me Hope in this Dark, Dark World of War and Hate

3. Why I Don't Expect the Palestinians Will *Ever* Make Peace with Israel and Thus Gain Statehood

4. The Antisemitism of Ron Paul's Far Right Anarcho-Capitalist Ideological Cult

5. When Holocaust Trivialization Manifests in the Wrestling World
   

These writings are part of my ongoing effort to overcome my PTSD by forcing myself to try to write and publish something every day commenting on and analyzing current cultural affairs and their impacts on politics, faith, and, well, everything. “Politics is downstream from culture,” the late Andrew Breitbart popularized among conservative bloggers while he was alive. I’d go a step further: Everything is downstream from culture. The cultures you embrace determine who you are and who you become. You become what you worship.

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While I’m usually only going to offer one installment per day in this ongoing series on antisemitism and culture, given that today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day and I just came across a profound point made by

Yair Rosenberg

, one of today’s very best writers on antisemitism, a second post is more than justified.

Today Yair highlighted some of his previous writings on the Holocaust and emphasized a chart from this post here, which I’ll reproduce:

How to Explain the Holocaust in One Simple Statistic

Yair wrote:

What exactly is meant by the term "Holocaust"? It means that the global Jewish population in 2019 (~15 million) is still lower than it was in 1939 (16.6 million). So many Jews were murdered that we still haven't recovered demographically after 80 years.

Sit with that for a moment.

This post from Yair was written in 2019 and still today the number of Jews worldwide remains below the 1939 level. This article from September of last year notes that as of 2022 the global population of Jews is 15.3 million. The largest percentage of them live in Israel: 7,080,000. The US population of Jews is second highest worldwide, with 6 million. In 2015 it was estimated that Europe now had 1.4 million Jews.

So that’s the first key number to think about: 16.6 million in 1939, a number higher than the number of Jews alive today.

Here’s the other horrifying number to put that figure in greater perspective: 2/3rds. That’s the number of European Jews murdered, which the Holocaust Encyclopedia notes here:

Before the Nazi takeover of power in 1933, Europe had a vibrant and mature Jewish culture. By 1945, most European Jews—two out of every three—had been killed. Most of the surviving remnant of European Jewry decided to leave Europe. Hundreds of thousands established new lives in Israel, the United States, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, South America, and South Africa.

When one even attempts to mentally and emotionally process those figures, does it make a bit more sense why acts like wearing a Nazi uniform because it supposedly looks cool or would be funny are so morally revolting? Or why a figure like Kanye West proclaiming to conspiracist Alex Jones that he loves Nazis is so stomach-churning? Or why far-right conspiracist congresswoman Marge Greene talking about “Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police” should make any decent person disgusted?

Meanwhile, here are a few other numbers to contemplate today. NBC News reported in 2020, my emphasis added, Survey finds 'shocking' lack of Holocaust knowledge among millennials and Gen Z:

The survey, touted as the first 50-state survey of Holocaust knowledge among millennials and Generation Z, showed that many respondents were unclear about the basic facts of the genocide. Sixty-three percent of those surveyed did not know that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and over half of those thought the death toll was fewer than 2 million. Over 40,000 concentration camps and ghettos were established during World War II, but nearly half of U.S. respondents could not name a single one.

Here’s another one, published 2 days ago, with my emphases added, New Study Reveals Nearly One Quarter of Dutch Millennials and Gen Z Believe the Holocaust Was a Myth or Exaggerated:

The number of Dutch adults who believe the Holocaust is a myth was higher than any country previously surveyed; 12% of all respondents believe the Holocaust is a myth or the number of Jews killed has been greatly exaggerated, while 9% are unsure. These numbers are higher among Dutch Millennials and Gen Z, where nearly one-quarter (23%) believe the Holocaust is a myth or the number of Jews killed has been greatly exaggerated, while 12% are unsure…

More than half of all respondents (54% of all respondents and 59% of Millennial and Gen Z) do not know that six million Jews were murdered, and 29% believe that two million or fewer Jews were killed during the Holocaust. Alarmingly, this number grew to 37% of Millennials and Gen Z who believe that two million or fewer Jews were murdered during the Holocaust…

22% of Millennials and Gen Z feel it is acceptable for an individual to support neo-Nazi views and 13% are unsure. 12% of all Dutch respondents feel it is acceptable and 11% are unsure.

Need more evidence of both adults and especially the younger generations’ ignorance and moral confusion all around the world? How about Canada’s numbers here?

• 15 percent of Canadian adults and over one-fifth of Millennials and Gen Z (22%) haven’t heard or are not sure if they have heard of the Holocaust.

• More than half of all Canadians (54%) and nearly two-thirds of Millennials and Gen Z (62%) do not know that 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust – and approximately one-quarter think that 2 million Jews or fewer were killed.

• Overall, almost half of all Canadian adults (49%) and 52% of Millennials and Gen Z cannot name one of the over 40,000 Nazi camps—such as Auschwitz— and ghettos in Europe during the Holocaust.

What is one to even say in response to numbers like these? I can’t even muster my usual angry expletives. The sheer magnitude of the depressing ignorance across America and other countries leaves me speechless. “Never Again”? Dream on. Prepare yourselves for a 21st century likely to be just as blood-drenched and horrifying as the 20th. This is just what humans are and what we as a species do to each other.