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Converging evidence
Holocaust history is established through perpetrator documents, deportation lists, censuses, railway records, photographs and film, architecture and archaeology, Jewish underground archives, diaries, letters, survivor and liberator testimony, perpetrator testimony, demographic reconstruction and trial evidence. Historians test provenance, compare independent records and distinguish what a source proves from what it does not.
Why the figure is approximately six million
The accepted figure of approximately six million Jewish victims is a historical estimate based on many overlapping sources, not a claim that a complete Nazi list survived. Records are incomplete because many people were murdered without registration, files were destroyed, borders changed and wartime displacement complicated demographic accounting. Precision therefore requires ranges and definitions rather than invented exactness.
Key figures
Approximately two out of every three European Jews were murdered. About 2.7 million Jews were murdered at the five principal killing centers. As many as two million Jews were murdered in mass shootings or gas vans in formerly Soviet-controlled territories. Approximately 1.5 million Jewish children were murdered. About 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz, around one million of them Jews. Every number should be read as people and families, not simply as a statistic.
Methodology and uncertainty
Evidence types
Perpetrator documents, victim archives, testimony, photographs, physical sites, archaeology, demographics and trials provide independent lines of evidence.
Authentication
Provenance, stamps, handwriting, file context, cross-archival copies and technical analysis help authenticate documents.
Victim totals
Historical estimates combine prewar population data, deportation records, camp and shooting records and postwar survivor information.
Uncertainty
Pages should label documented minimums, institutional estimates, scholarly ranges and disputed geographic scopes rather than create false precision.
Sources
This page is an educational synthesis based on the following sources. Consult the full sources for deeper research.