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The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
© 1978, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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Page 152 |
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What is striking is to see that of all the
nationalities the Jews are the only people whose population in 1959 is less
than in 1939 and even in 1926, and this despite a contribution of nearly
700,000 persons in 1940 coming from the Baltic countries and from Bessarabia.
The effectives of all the other nationalities increased between 1939 and 1959.
In the case of the Russians, the Georgians, the Armenians and the Germans, it
is certainly due to natural growth. In other cases – Ukrainians,
Bielorussians – to an increase somewhat exaggerated, no doubt, following
the annexations of regions in which these nationalities were relatively
numerous. In the case of the Poles and especially that of the Rumanians, the
Estonians, the Lithuanians and the Latvians, there is a fantastic leap forward
which is evidently explained by annexation. No less evident is the explanation
of the considerable and specific decreases in the Jewish population after 1939:
they are consequences of the "final solution."
This analysis can be
improved and it allows one to figure up these consequences with a good
approximation. In fact, one may consider the years from 1926 to 1939 as a
reference period for the growth of the population of the USSR: it begins five
years after the end of the civil war, with the recovery due to the "new
economic policy;" and despite the very numerous upheavals which characterize
the history of Russia during the Thirties, it remains relatively stable from
the demographic point of view. In any event, it is much more stable than the
period which succeeds it with the war from 1941 to 1945, the invasion of vast
territories, the heavy military and civilian human losses, and the long absence
from their homes of young people at the age of procreation. By calculating the
annual growth rate in the conditions of the USSR during the period, 1926-39, it
is possible afterwards to extrapolate for the following twenty years by thus
determining what its numerical value should "normally" have been in 1959. A
comparison of the value thus calculated with the one really ascertained by the
census allows one to figure up, with good probability, the consequences in
human losses of the war years.
The problem of highest priority for us
is that of the Jewish population. However, it is instructive to compare the
results of the calculation obtained in the case of other nationalities
numerically comparable to the Jewish population and for whom the effects of the
war were not specifically grave. Such are the cases of the Georgians, the
Armenians and the Germans. In fact, the Georgian and Armenian Republics
suffered a short-lived occupation, without particular violence on the part of
the occupier. As for the Germans in the USSR, they were in large part deported
to Siberia in 1941, where they lived in material conditions which were
certainly difficult, but less dramatic than those, for example, of the
Ukrainians or the Bielorussians. Also, the separation of the sexes did not take
place because they were not mobilized into the army. Finally, after the war,
there was a small immigration of 50,000 Armenians, which is numerically
negligible, who came to USSR from eastern Asia and from Europe. As for the
Germans of the
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The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
© 1978, The
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