Demographics of Hungarian-Jewish Auschwitz Survivors Debunks Holocaust Denial

In Summer 1944, more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. According to Holocaust deniers, the people selected as unfit for work at ramp in Birkenau were not killed, but interned at other places. Don't ask where, as they have no idea where this is supposed to be. But if the Revisionist "transit camp" hypothesis were historically true, there should be literally train loads of evidence for it by now, starting from contemporary sources to countless testimonies. Yet, there is no evidence that the Hungarian Jews unfit for work were systematically brought away from Auschwitz and interned in alleged "family camps".

The "Revisionist" fantasies on the survival of unfit Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz is refuted by available demographic data, like that collected by Hungarian National Relief Committee for Deportees (hereafter as its Hungarian abbreviation DEGOB), which suggests a survival rate of close to or equal zero and strongly supports their systematic extermination by the Nazis.

In 1945/46, the DEGOB staff had interviewed individuals and groups of Hungarian Jews, in total about 5000 people, who stayed or passed through Budapest. About 3000 of those had been previously deported to Auschwitz (this data has been also used in Knowledge of Mass Extermination Among Hungarian Jews Returning from Auschwitz). The age and sex composition of the returnees is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Age and sex composition of Hungarian-Jewish Auschwitz survivors according to DEGOB.

To further illustrate how the figure challenges Holocaust denial, Figure 2 shows the age and sex distribution of the Hungarian Jews recorded by DEGOB (this time also including those not deported to Auschwitz) superimposed with the Hungarian census of 1947. It should be mentioned that the latter does not entirely correspond to the population pyramid of the Hungarian Jews before their extermination by the Nazis. The sub-population of Hungarian Jews was "older" than non-Jewish Hungarians, so that there were somewhat fewer young people in favour of more elderly, but this does not save deniers and accounts for the glaring differences.

Figure 2: Age and sex composition of Hungarian Jews according to DEGOB and Hungarian census of 1947 (normalised to the females of 14-19 years).

As can be seen, the decimated population pyramid of the Hungarian Jews has been chopped off below 14 years and above 50 years, which corresponds to the age groups usually considered unfit for work by the Germans SS doctors and officers at the ramp in Birkenau. There are only few exceptions, but even those can be well explained. The protocols of the interviews not only provide age and sex of the Auschwitz survivors, but also personal information and what happened to them after their arrival in the camp.

Four of the returnees were less than 10 years old when brought to Auschwitz according to the DEGOB records. The youngest, C.E., was born in 1939 according to his DEGOB protocol. He arrived in Auschwitz on 18 May 1944 and was transported to the work camp Fünfteichen five days later, where "we worked daily, working time was 14 hours". Hence, C.E. was selected as fit for work at the ramp in Birkenau and put to forced labour. The year of birth 1939 is likely a typo, like for 1929. This is also supported by his occupation "shoemaker’s apprentice" (cipésztanonc) given in the protocol. Likewise, the other three survivors below 10 years were selected as fit for work in Birkenau, either because they appeared mature already or slipped through the selection process, and were sent to forced labour camps (F.H. to Leonberg,  B.B. to Groß-Rosen and B.L. to Monowitz). The same holds for the oldest survivor, F.S., who was brought to the V1 production site Thil despite his age of 68 years because he "looked not more than 40-45 years at that time".

About 320,000 of 420,000 Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz in Summer 1944 were selected as unfit for work. Even supposing - for the sake of argument - that the alleged family camps of Hungarian Jews hypothesised by Holocaust deniers would have had a high mortality and that its survivors would have been less mobile to go back to Hungary, there still had to be a substantial proportion of them among the Auschwitz survivors in the DEGOB protocols. But there is not a single one. The complete lack of Jews selected as unfit for work in this demographic data set radically refutes the denier notion that these were kept alive.