I watched this film yesterday and it is still available to watch on BBC iPlayer. I would highly recommend it, lots of original trial footage woven into the film and some very moving witness accounts, especially the chap that found his dead wife and children. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b050d2t9/the-eichmann-show Whilst watching it, it got me wondering how close the Nazi's came to completely eradicating the Jewish race. It's well documented that approx 6 million Jews were murdered in Europe but is the any statistics to how many were still alive in Europe at the end of the war and how many were alive in other parts of the world?
I really enjoyed this show, too Andy. Great drama. The survivors testimonies were chilling. I seem to remember a figure at the end of Schindler's list stating that there were 6,000 polish jews alive at the end of the war. Dont know about the rest and not even sure how accurate that figure above is.
It was indeed a fascinating programme. In the Netherlands, 140,000 had registered as full Jews by October 1941. This included Non-Dutch people. 110,000 were deported to the camps and of these, only 5450 returned. (From the book, Ashes in the Wind (The destruction of Dutch Jewry) by Dr J Presser, 1965. Amazing to think that a large number went successfully into hiding, as well as evaders (onderduikers) from forced labour, in such a small country. There is another documentary on BBC4 on Sunday 25th January called Shoah. An epic of nearly 4 and a half hours. Interviews with witnesses, perpetrators and survivors. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0516gd5
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum says that there were 9.5 million Jews in Europe in 1933. Some will have left before WWII, and it includes people in neutral countries, the UK and parts of the USSR not occupied by the Germans. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005161 The Jewish Virtual Library says 8,861,800 Jews of whom 5,933,900 were killed. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/killedtable.html About.com says 9,793,000 of whom 5,709,329 were killed. http://history1900s.about.com/library/holocaust/bldied.htm The two above both exclude the UK and neutral countries, but include parts of the USSR not occupied. Both are guilty of spurious accuracy, as they quote a number to the nearest 100 or even 1, when some of the figures being aggregated are rounded to the nearest 10,000 or even 100,000 If anybody wants to see more of Eichmann's trial, Yad Vashem has put over 200 hours of it on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/user/EichmannTrialEN
The 4.5 hour documentary on BBC4 on Sunday evening mentioned above is only the first half of Shoah. I assume that the second half is on a week later. It contains almost no archive footage. People are mostly interviewed at the scenes of the crimes, with a few elsewhere. Franz Suchomel, a former Treblinka guard, is very open about what he did. He did not know that he was being filmed.
There are several estimates that state 75% of French Jews survived the war. That was in spite of the collaborative Vichy government. Most of the Jews who had come to France for refuge as the war started were exterminated, but there were many French people who sheltered Jews, especially in the rural areas. Others passed themselves off as gentiles, or joined the Resistance. Whereas Poland, with a much bigger Jewish population, most of them impoverished, suffered the biggest % loss. Interestingly, of the German Jews, where it all began, many escaped early and the loss wasn't so great. They seemed to have been better off financially and able to start up businesses in their new host countries. Some countries, eg Denmark, protected their Jews and sent them to safety in time. Also Albania I believe.