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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
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... About the Victims |
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1. Can I find out what happened to a friend or family member during the Holocaust? 
The single most important thing to keep in mind when attempting to document victims of the Holocaust is that no single master list of those who perished exists anywhere in the world. This circumstance has frustrated many of those trying to uncover the fate of family members, but the horrible fact remains that millions died with little record of the event.
Despite the German reputation for meticulous recordkeeping, many incidents occurred during the Holocaust without any information being recorded. Jews transported to extermination camps like Belzec or Treblinka were sent to their deaths without documenting their arrival. At concentration camps like Auschwitz, those selected for gassing rather than labor were killed immediately without recording their deaths. Individuals found in hiding and shot, or other incidents of random shootings, also passed without documentation. Mass executions were sometimes documented by date, location, and number of victims, but these records usually did not include individual names. Even where information about individuals was originally documented, we are often left today without that information, since the Nazis destroyed countless records in the last days of the war.
Given all these obstacles to documenting victims, what resources are available for researching individuals?
- One can still find copies of hundreds of deportation lists for those sent to camps, and numerous camps kept records of those inmates forced into labor.
- Many death lists have been published by country, region, or camp, though you will not find such lists for every country, region, or camp.
- Over a thousand memorial books have been published to document the fate of those who perished. Such books, also known as yizkor books, usually focus on a town or a region, detailing the town's history and memorializing those who died. Most are written in Hebrew or Yiddish.
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The International Tracing Service in Arolsen, Germany maintains a master index of information relating to more than 14 million individuals. More information is available from their Web site, or the Service can be contacted directly at:
International Tracing Service
Grosse Allee 5-9
34444 Arolsen, Germany
- The Holocaust and War Victims Tracing Center of the American Red Cross, in conjunction with the International Tracing Service, can provide assistance in determining the fate of those who died in the Holocaust, in documenting forced labor or internment in a concentration camp, or in locating survivors. Contact your local Red Cross chapter for more information.
- Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Israel, has documents pertaining to the Holocaust that are not always available elsewhere, including millions of Pages of Testimony provided by those with knowledge of the victims. These pages are a part of Yad Vashem's attempt to document each individual who died in the Holocaust. In November 2004, Yad Vashem launched the Central Database of Shoah Victims Names, which provides information about nearly three million Jewish Holocaust victims drawn from Pages of Testimony and other sources. While Yad Vashem's collection efforts have resulted in the most extensive list of Jewish victims currently available, it, too, is incomplete.
- Finally, The Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Jewish Holocaust Survivors here at the Museum has over 100,000 records documenting the lives of survivors and their families.
The Museum Library staff is happy to assist you with identifying resources in our collection that can help in your search, but due to the complexity and time-intensive nature of this kind of research we cannot construct your family history for you. If you are visiting the Museum to conduct family history research, you may want to familiarize yourself first with some of the major resources available.
2. How many Jews were killed during the Holocaust?
Victims' shoes found in Majdanek after the liberation.
— Archiwum Akt Nowych
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The estimated number of Jewish fatalities during the Holocaust is usually given as between 5.1 and 6 million victims. However, despite the availability of numerous scholarly works and archival sources on the subject, Holocaust-related figures might never be definitively known. Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind that the available Holocaust statistics include a wide margin of error because:
- Not all victims of the Holocaust were registered.
- Countless records that did exist were destroyed by the Nazis, or lost, burned, or damaged in military actions.
- Records often contain fragmentary information, failing to include, for example, the victim's ethnic, national, or religious affiliation.
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In addition, one should critically examine any statistics presented because:
- Different scholars have used different base dates for computing their figures, a situation that results in statistical differences due to the changing national borders of the Holocaust period.
- Figures for victims of a given country usually include not only citizens but also resident aliens and stateless refugees.
- Scholars have sometimes wrongly equated data about the arrests of various victims with fatalities, particularly in the case of non-Jewish victims.
What follows are two different estimates of Jewish deaths by country and the sources from which those statistics are drawn. Please note that these are just a sampling of the published Holocaust-related statistics. Additional sources for estimates of Jewish deaths are provided following these two examples:
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| Country |
Number |
| Poland |
up to 3,000,000 |
| USSR |
over 700,000 |
| Romania |
270,000 |
| Czechoslovakia |
260,000 |
| Hungary |
over 180,000 |
| Germany |
130,000 |
| Lithuania |
up to 130,000 |
| Netherlands |
over 100,000 |
| France |
75,000 |
| Latvia |
70,000 |
| Yugoslavia |
60,000 |
| Greece |
60,000 |
| Austria |
over 50,000 |
| Belgium |
24,000 |
| Italy (including Rhodes) |
9,000 |
| Estonia |
over 1,000 |
| Norway |
under 1,000 |
| Luxembourg |
under 1,000 |
| Danzig |
under 1,000 |
| Total |
5,100,000 |
Source: Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 3rd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), Vol. 3, p. 1321.
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| Country |
Minimum Loss |
Maximum Loss |
| Austria |
50,000 |
50,000 |
| Belgium |
28,900 |
28,900 |
| Bohemia and Moravia |
78,150 |
78,150 |
| Bulgaria |
0 |
0 |
| Denmark |
60 |
60 |
| Estonia |
1,500 |
2,000 |
| Finland |
7 |
7 |
| France |
77,320 |
77,320 |
| Germany |
134,500 |
141,500 |
| Greece |
60,000 |
67,000 |
| Hungary |
550,000 |
569,000 |
| Italy |
7,680 |
7,680 |
| Latvia |
70,000 |
71,500 |
| Lithuania |
140,000 |
143,000 |
| Luxembourg |
1,950 |
1,950 |
| Netherlands |
100,000 |
100,000 |
| Norway |
762 |
762 |
| Poland |
2,900,000 |
3,000,000 |
| Romania |
271,000 |
287,000 |
| Slovakia |
68,000 |
71,000 |
| Soviet Union |
1,000,000 |
1,100,000 |
| Yugoslavia |
56,200 |
63,300 |
Source: Yehuda Bauer, and Robert Rozett, "Estimated Jewish Losses in the Holocaust," in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (New York: Macmillan, 1990), p.1799. See this source for a full explanation of these statistics.
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For additional Holocaust statistics, see:
- Benz, Wolfgang, editor. Dimension des Volkermords: Die Zahl der judischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1991.
- Fleming, Gerald. Hitler and the Final Solution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
- Lestchinsky, Jacob. Crisis, Catastrophe, and Survival: A Jewish Balance Sheet, 1941-1948. New York: Institute of Jewish Affairs of the World Jewish Congress, 1948.
- Levin, Nora. The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry, 1933-1945. New York: Schocken, 1973
- Reitlinger, Gerald. The Final Solution, the Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1987
3. How many Catholics were killed during the Holocaust?
Friedrich Hoffman, a Czech priest, testifies at the trial of former camp personnel and prisoners from Dachau.
— National Archives
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Although the Catholic Church was persecuted in the Third Reich, Catholics as a group were not officially targeted by the Nazis merely for practicing the Catholic faith. In fact, a substantial minority of the population of the Third Reich was baptized Catholic, including some members of the Nazi elite. The Nazis did try to systematically undermine the Church's influence and teachings through propaganda and cracked down hard on individual clergymen who dared to criticize the policies of the regime. Members of the clergy who were unwilling to embrace the Nazi state risked arrest for a myriad of violations: refusal to remove religious artifacts from schools; participation in religious processions; political criticism from the pulpit; assistance to public enemies such as Jews; pacifism, etc. Punishment ranged from a few days in jail to internment in a concentration camp to execution. Often, members of the clergy died under ambiguous circumstances while serving a sentence or awaiting trial, with their deaths officially attributed to accident or illness. Catholic laity who were unwilling to submit to Nazi rule faced similar persecution.
In the eastern European regions, millions of Poles -- Jews and Catholics alike -- were murdered by the SS and police personnel in the field or in killing centers such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka. In the ideology of the Nazis, the Poles were considered an inferior "race." The Germans intended to murder members of the political, cultural and military elite and reduce the remainder of the Polish population to the status of a vast pool of labor for the so-called German master race. It is estimated that between 5 and 5.5 million Polish civilians, including 3 million Polish Jews, died or were killed under Nazi occupation. This figure excludes Polish civilians and military personnel who were killed in military or partisan operations. They number approximately 664,000.
SS authorities in the concentration camps did not generally record the religious affiliation of a prisoner, with the exception of the Jehovah's Witnesses. As a result it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to reliably estimate the total number of Catholic victims who were persecuted or killed because of some action or position connected to their Catholic faith. Some data exists regarding the number of Catholic prisoners (especially members of the clergy) in individual camps. For example, the following table illustrates the number of clergy incarcerated in the concentration camp at Dachau:
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Clergy Incarcerated in Dachau Camp
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| Nationality |
Catholics |
Other creeds |
Total |
| Poles |
1,748 |
32 |
1,780 |
| Germans |
411 |
36 |
447 |
| French |
153 |
3 |
156 |
| Czechs, Slovaks |
93 |
16 |
109 |
| Dutch |
29 |
34 |
63 |
| Belgians |
46 |
- |
46 |
| Italians |
28 |
- |
28 |
| Luxemburgers |
16 |
- |
16 |
| Danes |
- |
5 |
5 |
| Lithuanians |
2 |
1 |
3 |
| Hungarians |
3 |
- |
3 |
| Stateless |
1 |
2 |
3 |
| Swiss |
- |
2 |
2 |
| Greeks |
- |
2 |
2 |
| British |
2 |
- |
2 |
| Albanians |
- |
2 |
2 |
| Norwegians |
- |
1 |
1 |
| Rumanians |
1 |
- |
1 |
| Spaniards |
1 |
- |
1 |
| Totals |
2,579 |
141 |
2,720 |
(Of these, a total of 1,034 died in the camp; 132 were transferred to other camps or liquidated; 1,240 were liberated on April 29, 1945; and 314 were released before that date.)
Source: Johann Neuhausler, What Was It Like in the Concentration Camp at Dachau? (Munich: Manz, 1961).
For additional information on the subject of Catholics in the Holocaust, see:
- Hehl, Ulrich von. Priester unter Hitlers Terror: eine biographische und statistische Erhebung. Paderborn: F. Schonigh, 1996.
- Helmreich, Ernst Christian. The German Churches under Hitler: Background, Struggle, and Epilogue. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979.
- Hlond, August. The Persecution of the Catholic Church in German-Occupied Poland: Reports Presented by H. E. Cardinal Hlond, Primate of Poland, to Pope Pius XII, Vatican Broadcasts, and Other Reliable Evidence. London: Burns, Oates, 1941.
- Hoffmann, Bedrich. And Who Will Kill You: The Chronicle of the Life and Sufferings of Priests in the Concentration Camps. Posnan: Pallottinum, 1949.
- Hurten, Heinz. Die katholische Kirche zwischen Nationalsozialismus und Widerstand. Berlin: Gedenkstatte Deutscher Widerstand, 1989.
- Kempner, Benedicta Maria. Nonnen unter dem Hakenkreuz: Leiden, Heldentum, Tod; die erste Dokumentation uber das Schicksal der Nonnen im 3. Reich. Wurzburg: Naumann, 1979.
- Kempner, Benedicta Maria. Priester vor Hitlers Tribunalen. Munchen: Rutten & Loening, 1966.
- Matheson, Peter. The Third Reich and the Christian Churches. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark Ltd., 1981.
- McCauley, M. Janet. The Fate of Catholic Schools in the Third Reich: A Case Study. Posn'n: Pallottinum, 1994.
- Moll, Helmut. Zeugen für Christus: das deutsche Martyrologium des 20. Jahrhunderts. Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000.
- Royal, Robert. The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century: A Comprehensive World History. New York : Crossroad, 2000.
- Shuster, George N. Like a Mighty Army: Hitler Versus Established Religion. New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1935.
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| Latest update: January 14, 2008 |
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