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Civilians Murdered During the Holocaust - Europe During World War II
Beyond Six Million Jews
Recently, a writer on Hubpages, John Sarkis, asked me about the number of non-Jewish deaths that were a direct result of the Holocaust. Only rough estimates of the number of non-combatants or civilians who died can be made. But when these numbers are derived and compiled from several different reliable and respected Holocaust and World War II historians, we can consider them reliable. Remember these were not soldiers, except for the Soviet Prisoners of War and those soldiers did not die in battle. After they were captured the Nazis marched them to the death camps in Poland, where they were starved and worked to death, and many were "processed" in the gas chambers and crematoriums. But the vast majority of the Nazi victims did not serve in the military; they were civilians - men, women, and children.
Estimates of Non-Combatant Civilian Deaths During the Holocaust:
Ukrainians 5.5 - 7 million
Jews (European countries) 6 million +
Russian POWs 3.3 million +
Russian Civilians 2 million +
Poles socialists/intellectuals 3 million +
Yugoslavians 1.5 million +
Gypsies 200,000 - 500,000
Mentally and Physically Disabled 70,000- 250,000
Homosexuals Tens of thousands
Spanish Republicans Tens of thousands
Jehovah's Witnesses 2,500 - 5,000
Smaller Populations Selected for Extermination by the Nazis
Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts
Protestant and Catholic Clergy
Communists
Czechs, Greeks, Serbs
Deportees
Political Prisoners
Resistance Fighters
Socialists
Trade Unionists
Total Deaths: 22 to 26 Million
Numbers based on these sources.
Michael Berenbaum,ed., A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis (New York/London, 1990), xi
Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe during the Second World War. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985.
Lipstadt, Deborah E. Beyond Belief: the American Press & the Coming of the Holocaust 1933-1945. New York/London: The Free Press, 1986.
Lukas, Richard C. The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles under German Occupation 1939-1944. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1986.
Milton, Sybil. Senior Historian, The United States Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC. Telephone interview. with Karen Silverstrim, 16 April 1997.
Silverstrim, Karen. Overlooked Millions: Non-Jewish Victims of the Holocaust. MA Candidate, University of Central Arkansas.
