Holocausto - Victims and Death Toll

Victims and Death Toll

Further information: The Destruction of the European Jews and The War Against the Jews

Victims	Killed	Source
Jews	5.9 million
Soviet POWs	2–3 million
Ethnic Poles	1.8–2 million
Romani	220,000–1,500,000
Disabled	200,000–250,000
Freemasons	80,000–200,000
Slovenes	20,000–25,000
Homosexuals	5,000–15,000
Jehovah's Witnesses	2,500–5,000

The number of victims depends on which definition of "the Holocaust" is used. Donald Niewyk and Francis Nicosia write in The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust that the term is commonly defined as the mass murder of more than five million European Jews. They further state that 'Not everyone finds this a fully satisfactory definition.' According to Martin Gilbert the total number of victims is just under six million—around 78 percent of the 7.3 million Jews in occupied Europe at the time. Timothy D. Snyder wrote that "The term Holocaust is sometimes used in two other ways: to mean all German killing policies during the war, or to mean all oppression of Jews by the Nazi regime."

Broader definitions include approximately two to three million Soviet POWs, two million ethnic Poles, up to 1,500,000 Romani, 200,000 handicapped, political and religious dissenters, 15,000 homosexuals and 5,000 Jehovah's Witnesses, bringing the death toll to around 11 million. The broadest definition would include six million Soviet civilians, raising the death toll to 17 million. A research project conducted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimated that 15 to 20 million people died or were imprisoned. R.J. Rummel estimates the total democide death toll of Nazi Germany to be 21 million. Other estimates put total casualties of the Soviet Union's citizens alone to about 26 million.