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Before I get to the question, I'd like to point out that this is a particularly sensitive topic so thanks for letting me ask and hopefully remaining serious.

I know that at least 6 million people (1) were murdered in the Holocaust. The Wikipedia article for Zyklon B says that it was only used to kill 1 million people (2) (though this figure is unreferenced).

Is this "1 million" figure correct? If so how did the other 5 million (or more) people die and what are the tolls?

I've tried to look for some more reputable (non-Wikipedia) sources but I'm not a historian and I wouldn't know where to start. If anyone could point me in the right direction, or provide a reference for the "1 million people" figure, I'd appreciate it. Many thanks.

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    Malnutrition, exhaustion, illness, and execution by shooting... Also, carbon monoxide was used in gas chambers and possibly other agents
    – user13123
    Jun 2, 2017 at 15:09
  • @HorusKol user2448131 Thanks for the answers. I was vaguely aware of the other methods but was mostly confused about the exact statistics (I just couldn't think of a concise way of wording that in the title).
    – Jam
    Jun 2, 2017 at 15:17
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    We're a bit wary of holocaust questions, they have a tendency to lead to bogus denial claims
    – user13123
    Jun 2, 2017 at 15:20
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    @HorusKol I was thinking that while trying to formulate my question. There's a particular sneaky type of language used by denialists that I was trying to avoid.
    – Jam
    Jun 2, 2017 at 15:22

1 Answer 1

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The 1 million figure quoted in the figure only relates to the use of Zyklon B at the gas chambers installed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, and other extermination camps. Einsatzgruppen killed over 2 million people, including some 1.3 million Jews, gas vans (using gasses other than Zyklon B) were used to murder large numbers, while many others were worked to death or simply died as a result of hunger and disease.

A breakdown of how and where victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution died can be found on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website. It doesn't make for easy reading. The following breakdown of Jewish deaths in the Holocaust is taken from there.

  • Auschwitz complex (including Birkenau, Monowitz, and subcamps): approximately 1 million
  • Treblinka 2: approximately 925,000
  • Belzec: 434,508
  • Sobibor: at least 167,000
  • Chelmno: 156,000–172,000
  • Shooting operations at various locations in central and southern German-occupied Poland (the so-called Government General): at least 200,000
  • Shooting operations in German-annexed western Poland (District Wartheland): at least 20,000
  • Deaths in other facilities that the Germans designated as concentration camps: at least 150,000
  • Shooting operations and gas wagons at hundreds of locations in the German-occupied Soviet Union: at least 1.3 million
  • Shooting operations in the Soviet Union (German, Austrian, Czech Jews deported to the Soviet Union): approximately 55,000
  • Shooting operations and gas wagons in Serbia: at least 15,088
  • Shot or tortured to death in Croatia under the Ustaša regime: 23,000–25,000
  • Deaths in ghettos: at least 800,000
  • Other*: at least 500,000

*"Other" includes, for example, persons killed in shooting operations in Poland in 1939–1940; as partisans in Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy, France or Belgium; in labor battalions in Hungary; during antisemitic actions in Germany and Austria before the war; by the Iron Guard in Romania, 1940–1941; and on evacuation marches from concentration camps and labor camps in the last six months of World War II. It also includes people caught in hiding and killed in Poland, Serbia, and elsewhere in German-occupied Europe.

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    This is exactly what I was looking for. Many thanks.
    – Jam
    Jun 2, 2017 at 15:18
  • Most of those deaths were NOT in extermination camps thogh.
    – Bregalad
    Jun 2, 2017 at 21:27
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    @Bregalad Yeah, I thought I'd answer the question, rather than just focusing on the title.
    – sempaiscuba
    Jun 2, 2017 at 21:54
  • Just want to add that the majority of death by gas in the extermination camps the lethal gas used was carbon monoxide from engine exhaust.
    – antlersoft
    Jun 5, 2017 at 18:07

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