History of Sorts

The graph above shows the estimated breakdown of the people murdered during the Holocaust. It is an estimated number because no one knows the exact number. The estimates are compiled by “Statista” a leading and very reputable statistics provider. The estimated number they have come up with is 17,458,900.

Personally, I think that number is more than likely higher. In general, the statistics don’t take into consideration the number of stillbirths, the suicides in the 1930s, and those who died in the months after the war ended. People like Eleazer Asscher. who died on July 14, 1945.

He belonged to the so-called Austauschjuden-Exchange Jews- who were imprisoned in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. When the Nazis saw that the English were getting very close, many people were put on trains between April 6 and 11, 1945, and sent to Theresienstadt camp. A journey through Germany followed, ending in Tröbitz, where the survivors on the train were liberated by the Soviet army on April 23, 1945.

After his repatriation to the Netherlands, he was taken care of in Eindhoven and died there as a result of the hardships in the camps.

However, all the numbers are statistics and some idiots will argue over them, and this is going to sound weird, but I don’t care about the numbers all that much. It is just an unfathomable bit of data.

The one thing that concerns me is the fact that the Holocaust happened in the first place and that it was allowed to happen in the supposedly most cultured and sophisticated part of the world, Europe.

That is just one of the problems, people in Europe and other countries in the West, always had this sense of superiority, and still do. It is not surprising then that when a political movement, with a very sophisticated and unscrupulous propaganda machine, was able to convince some parts of the population that there were some among them, that didn’t live up to that superiority.

The lies were believed and gradually the Nazis were putting laws in place to rid initially Germany, and later on, all other countries they occupied, of those who they deemed inferior. It is easy to point the finger solely at the Germans, but there were kindred political movements all over Europe, including the nations that were not occupied.

The Nazis succeeded to quell critical thinking to a great extent, by the time people started to ask certain questions it was too late.

The really upsetting thing is that in 2024, so many people seem to have forgotten. The lack of critical thinking is rife again. Anyone who has read books about the rise of Nazism, and the Weimar Republic era will have seen that the 2020s are becoming a carbon copy of the 1920s. There is one major difference, this time we have no excuse. We cannot say “We didn’t know”. Looking away is no option.

If we forget our history, we forfeit our future.

Sources

Eleazer Asscher

https://www.statista.com/topics/9066/the-holocaust/#topicOverview