re: #272 Sergey Romanov

re: #258 researchok

A good piece. But I think, as someone dealing with denial, that this needs correction:

About a million people perished in Auschwitz. I know what is written on the tablets there and the number is exaggerated for whatever reason. Moreover, the number on the tablets does not refer to Jews but to all victims, so “the millions of Poles and others put to death in Auschwitz” is plain wrong. The “about million” estimate was arrived by former Au. Museum director F. Piper in a special study, Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz substantiated the number of 1,000,000, though he left the place for 1,500,000 on rather shaky assumptions about the number of Polish Jews. During the Irving v. Lipstadt trial Prof. van Pelt, an unquestioned expert on Auschwitz, re-examined and reiterated Piper’s lower number, stating:

If my numbers are in err, forgive me.

Nevertheless, Auschwitz was never really about numbers, you know?