Seriously Now, Where Did The Jews "Evacuated to The East" Go?

A straightforward question to corner any Holocaust denier:

Where did the Jews considered unfit for work by the Nazis and "evacuated to the East" go?

Figure 1: Satellite map of Europe (Google Earth image) highlighting selected political-administrative regions of the Third Reich. The map also displays: The number of Jews 'evacuated' between June 1941 and April 1943, Remaining Jewish populations as of 1943, Partisan-populated areas within the German army's rear and operational zones, the boundary of the operational zone and the Eastern front line as of mid-1942.

On December 15, 1942, Adolf Eichmann’s RSHA Jewish Affairs office, IV B4, submitted a "Secret State Affair" report titled Operation and Situation Report on the Final Solution of the European Jewish Question (unfortunately not preserved). Himmler, however, found it lacking "professional accuracy" (left image, microfilm quality) and, unsatisfied, ordered his chief statistician, Richard Korherr, to take over data analysis from Eichmann's office (BArch NS 19/1577).

By March 23, 1943, Korherr had compiled a 16-page document, The Final Solution of the European Jewish Question, covering data up to December 31, 1942, for Himmler. A month later, on April 19, he prepared a condensed summary extending coverage to March 31, 1943, to be incorporated into a larger (not preserved) report on the Final Solution for Adolf Hitler, coordinated by the RSHA (BArch NS 19/1570, scans, text in German/English).

Korherr’s findings? Approximately 2.6 million European Jews had been "evacuated" eastward by Nazi operations. After factoring in double-counting, forced labor selections, and transports not routed to extermination camps such as Auschwitz, Belzec, Kulmhof, Sobibor, and Treblinka, we’re left with roughly 2.3 million Jews "evacuated to the East" between June 1941 and April 1943 - numbers that Holocaust deniers struggle to account for (see the appendix for details).

Even with combined forces, deniers like Carlo Mattogno, Thomas Kues, and Jürgen Graf couldn’t tackle this in their "inverted comma" opus The "Extermination Camps" of "Aktion Reinhardt". They weakly speculate about Jews fit for work being deported or directly transported east but fail to explain the fate of those "unfit" Jews deported to extermination camps. Graf concedes in TECOAR’s epilogue  "that we are unable to produce German wartime documents about the destination and the fate of the deportees" (TECOAR, p. 1503).

The reality is clear: the claim that these Jews were simply resettled further east, instead of killed in extermination camps, is a not true. Contemporary German documents show that the "evacuated" Jews did not reappear in the occupied Soviet territories under civilian administration, and the military-governed zones, already plagued by partisan conflict, were largely devoid of Jewish presence (see Figure 1).

Holocaust deniers have proposed the Pripet Marshes, located between the Reichskommissariat Ukraine and Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien, as a potential "resettlement" area for Jews (suggested by Mattogno, Graf, and Kues in TECOAR, p. 597ff. and explicitly by Steffen Werner in Die zweite babylonische Gefangenschaft). However, relocating hundreds of thousands of "evacuated" Jews to this swampy, hostile area in 1942 would have been inconceivable. These deportees were largely unfit for work and could not have managed the heavy labor required in the region.

 
Additionally, the Pripet Marshes were rife with partisan activity. Himmler was already alarmed by a mere 30,000 Jews concentrated in the Pinsk ghetto, which he deemed "the center of gang fighting in the Pripet swamps." He consequently ordered its immediate destruction in October 1942 (see image from the Topographie des Terrors exhibition, Berlin). This demonstrates that Nazi policy was to clear partisans from Jewish-populated areas, not to send Jewish populations into such dangerous zones. On October 4, 1942, a German army quartermaster even ordered the removal of just 30 Jewish families from a partisan zone in the Caucasus, sending them to Armavir (NARA, T501/R69). If 30 families posed a "problem" to Nazi forces, what would 2.3 million have represented?

 

During mass deportations to Auschwitz, Belzec, Kulmhof, Sobibor, and Treblinka, the Jewish population in Weissruthenien decreased from 150,000 to 30,000 by April 1943. Instead of taking in more Jews, authorities actively worked to reduce the remaining Jewish population. By July 1943, the Reichskommissariat Ostland reported 72,000 Jews and aimed to reduce this to 50,000 [1]. Similarly, the Reichskommissariat Ukraine was nearly devoid of Jews by April 1943 after extensive extermination campaigns in 1942, resulting in a documented death toll of 363,211 (report by Higher SS and Police Leader Hans-Adolf Prützmann).

 

By December 31, 1942, Generalkommissar Wolhynien noted on the "Jewry" that "the cleansing of the area is almost completed." By July 1943, Hitler himself remarked, "the Jews are all gone," quoting Gauleiter Erich Koch. As late as November 25, 1943, Schutzpolizei officer Josef Ruhr described the battalion's "special action to solve the Jewish question. Ukraine free of Jews." [2]

 

 

The notion that the Nazis resettled 2.3 million "useless eaters" (as they saw them) to the Eastern front defies both logic and evidence. The Nazis would not have placed masses of unfit Jews in the army's rear amidst high partisan activity and stretched supply lines. Moreover, there is no trace - no camps, no supplies, no documentation, no surviving witnesses - of such a massive population in the military-controlled East.

 

Thus, if deniers' "resettlement" assertion was true, 2.3 Million Jews - mostly unfit for work and useless eaters according to the Nazis - had to be sent to the army rear area. Such a huge population movement into the back of the fighting army - to areas with alarming partisan activity or along the army supply routes - seems incomprehensible both from the Nazis' point of view, who considered the Jews as "dangerous elements", and from that of the military forces. There is also not a shred of evidence for any large scale deportation of unfit Jews and the existence of numerous Jewish camps with the size of Auschwitz in the military-controlled Eastern area (no indication of camps, supplies, guards, survivors, etc.).

By April 1942, the northern military sector around Pskov was already "free of Jews," and subsequent monthly reports do not mention any Jewish presence or deportations. In August 1942, the army rejected setting up a concentration camp in Slanzy for oil shale production due to "lack of guards, materials, and workforce." [3] The central military sector had also largely eliminated its Jewish population, with the Einsatzgruppen reducing the number from 22,767 in early 1942 to just 1,615 laborers by mid-1943. [4] The southern military sector was similarly almost devoid of Jews, according to army reports from this area. The Crimean peninsula can also be dismissed as a relocation site, given the intense fighting there, which continued until July 1942.

Thus, about 1.7 million Jews “evacuated” to extermination camps like Auschwitz, Belzec, Kulmhof, Sobibor, and Treblinka simply disappeared. No Jews turned up in the East.

Originally, Korherr had noted in his 1943 statistical report that “evacuations” to camps in the Warthegau and Generalgouvernement (including Kulmhof, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka) meant “special treatment” of Jews—a standard euphemism for killing. As this phrase had become widely understood, Himmler ordered its replacement with “transportation” (letter by Rudolf Brandt of 10 April 1943). Indeed, Korherr’s conclusion was clear: the "evacuated" Jews were "lost" to European Jewry, counted as "off-going" without reappearing elsewhere, effectively marking them as dead. His findings match the documented mass killings in extermination camps. Another 633,300 "evacuated" Jews disappeared in the occupied Russian territories, which corresponds approximately to the mass killings of Jews attributed to the Einsatzgruppen (Kruglov, К вопросу о количестве евреев, уничтоженных эйнзатцгруппами в 1941-1943 гг).

The Nazis used terms like "evacuation" and "resettlement" as cover-up euphemisms for the genocide of the Jews. Officially, railway officials, local populations, and others were simply told that Jews were being moved "eastward," which was all they were supposed to know. Unofficially, however, information about the mass murder leaked out through escaped prisoners, outside observers, and loose talk - spreading widely despite the Nazis' efforts to keep it secret.

On October 4, 1943, in his Posen speech, Himmler openly acknowledged the deceptive terminology: "I am talking about the Jewish evacuation: the extermination of the Jewish people."

Holocaust Denial

Most of the sources referenced in [1, 2] were already cited in Holocaust Controversies’ critique of deniers Mattogno, Graf, and Kues. Yet, Kues ignored them in his chapter in TECOAR, failing to clarify the fate of the Jews. Instead, he bothered about small groups of Western Jews fit for labor, goods stolen from Dutch Jews arriving in Vilna, and Jewish forced laborers, primarily Ukrainian and Romanian, working along Durchgangsstraße IV in Ukraine. But he missed the larger point: no masses of Jews "evacuated" from Nazi-controlled areas appeared in the Reichskommissariate Ostland and Ukraine.

As for Mattogno? He focused on trivial issues - the citation style and present tense in the first two sentences of Koch’s statement—instead of addressing the actual content (TECOAR, p. 785).

In a bizarre twist, Steffen Werner suggested in Die zweite babylonische Gefangenschaft (1990) that "the Jews were settled in eastern White Ruthenia" and were "still held in a kind of captivity by the Soviet Union today!" Even Jürgen Graf, not exactly the sharpest knife among "Revisionists," had to admit that Werner’s theory was to be regarded "as impossible" - evident, since the Soviet Union no longer exists and no "hidden" Jews emerged.

Yet former denier high-flyer Thomas Kues proposed his own odd theory in TECOAR, speculating that a large portion of the "evacuated" Jews, along with deported Western Jews who survived, were kept behind the Iron Curtain and possibly deported to remote areas of northern Russia or Siberia, where Stalin could allegedly sustain the "myth" of extermination in "gas chambers" (TECOAR, p. 755).

It seems Holocaust deniers would rather indulge in bizarre, baseless theories than admit the Nazis mass-murdered the Jews.

In reality, there was simply nowhere for the Jews who vanished from Auschwitz, Belzec, Kulmhof, Sobibor, and Treblinka to have "resettled" under Nazi occupation. In practice, deniers sidestep the issue by discussing only isolated, cherry-picked regions. However, if the entire Jewish population across these regions is considered at once, their evasive tactic—shifting the missing Jews from one area to another as a "black box" - fails. When all evidence is laid out, it’s clear:

• Jews "unsuitable for work" who vanished from Auschwitz and Kulmhof did not reappear in the Generalgouvernement, where the Jewish population had been systematically eliminated, leaving only forced laborers.
  
  
• Jews cleared from the Generalgouvernement were not "resettled" into the partisan-populated Pripet Marshes or into the Reichskommissariate Ukraine and Ostland, which had also been systematically depleted of Jews.
  
  
• Jews who disappeared from the Reichskommissariate were neither exchanged between these regions nor shifted to the army’s rear or partisan territories, where Jews were almost entirely absent.
  

 

It’s game over for Holocaust denial, again and again.

References

[1] Protocol of a speech of Eduard Strauch of 10 April 1943,  Benz, Einsatz im Reichskommissariat Ostland, p. 235; Memo of 20 August 1943 on a conference of 13 July 1943, NO-1831, Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals, Volume 13, p. 1021.

[2] Situation report of Generalkommissar Wolhynien of 31 December 1942, Pohl et al., Der deutsche Krieg im Osten 1941-1944: Facetten einer Grenzüberschreitung, p. 184; situation report of Reichskommissar Ukraine,  Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard, p. 266; meeting of Adolf Hitler with Wilhelm Keitel and Kurt Zeitzler of 8 July 1943, Madajczyk, Rozstrzygnięcie przez Hitlera sporu o metody eksploatacji zasobów ludzkich okupowanej Europy Wschodniej, p. 171; notes by Josef Ruhr for a lecture on 25 November 1943,  Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, p. 715.

[3]  Ereignismeldung UdSSR no 189 of 3 April 1942, Mallmann et al., Deutsche Berichte aus dem Osten 1942-1943. Dokumente der Einsatzgruppen in der Sowjetunion III, p. 256; monthly reports of Befehlshaber im Heeresgebiet Nord for July, August & September 1942 (entries on Jews lacking), NARA T501/R14.

[4] Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, p. 684 & 688.

[5] Situation report of Befehlshaber Heeresgebiet Don of 7 December 1942 ("Jews have only been sporadically identified in the army area"); Situation report of Oberfeldkommandantur Donez of 24 September 1942 ("Significant numbers of Jews only exist in the Woroschilowgrad  area, e.g. in the city of Woroschilowgrad 1038, in Woroschilowsk around 100."); Situation report of Feldkommandantur 503 of 12 January 1943 (entry on Jews lacking); Oberfeldkommandantur 399 of 20 December 1942 (entry on Jews lacking), situation report of Feldkommandantur 239 of 2 December 1942 ("Otherwise [apart from one Jewess], as far as could be determined, Jews have so far not appeared"), situation report of Ortskommandantur 259 of 4 August 1942 ("only two Jews"), situation report of Feldkommandantur 668 of 4 October 1942 ("The Jews identified in the area were evacuated by the SD"), NARA T501/R19.

Appendix

The Numbers

For simplicity, Jewish loss figures here are primarily drawn from the reports of RSHA statistician Richard Korherr.

Since Korherr relied only on deportation and Einsatzgruppen data from Eichmann’s office, many Jewish deaths resulting from Nazi policies were either excluded or not explicitly addressed in his study. These omissions include deaths in ghettos and camps, additional shootings and gassings beyond those attributed to the Einsatzgruppen, and mass killings by Axis puppet states. Therefore, the figure of "evacuated" Jews should not be mistaken for an estimate of the total Holocaust death toll up to 1943.

The sum for the Generalgouvernement, the Warthegau, the Reich, other European countries and  occupied Russian territories stands at about 2.58 Mio. Jews (2nd column in Table 1).

Korherr’s records, however, also missed forced labor selections among "evacuated" Jews, double-counted some deportations, and included transports to Ostland. The adjusted figure for Jews "evacuated" via extermination camps and Einsatzgruppen killings is shown in the 3rd column, totaling around 2.33 million Jews.

Table 1

Region	"Evacuated to East" (Korherr report)	"Evacuated to East" (adjusted figures*)
Generalgouvernement	1,274,166	1,261,405
Warthegau	145,301	145,301
Reich (w. Protektorat Böhmen & Mähren, Eastern territories, w/o Warthegau)	313,882	175,769
France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Greece	208,772	110,302
Occupied Russian territories	633,300	633,300
SUM	2,575,421	2,326,077

* only extermination camps and Einsatzgruppen

The figures for the Generalgouvernement, Reich, and other European countries were adjusted as follows:

Generalgouvernemen

• minus Polish transports to Majdanek (12,761; addition from late December 1942 in the Höfle telegram, presumed to be transfers from the Generalgouvernement throughout 1942, Schwindt, Das Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslager Majdanek, p. 183-186)

Reich (including Protektorat Böhmen & Mähren, Eastern territories w/o Warthegau:

• minus transports from the Reich to Litzmannstadt (19,441; Feuchert et al. (ed.), Die Chronik des Gettos Lodz/Litzmannstadt 1941, p. 274 - since already included in Warthegau figures)
• minus selections for work in Auschwitz (16,151; Czech, Kalendarium)
• minus transfers to Majdanek (3,615; Höfle telegram figure for Majdanek until mid-December 1942 minus transfer of Slovakian Jews to Majdanek)
• minus transports to Ostland (45,212; transport lists from Bundesarchiv Gedenkbuch "Opfer der Verfolgung der Juden unter der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft in Deutschland 1933-1945" - for the sake of simplicity, this ignores that a significant number of those transports were subjected to direct extermination, e.g. at Maly Trostinez near Minsk).
• minus transports Reich to Lublin area, w/o direct transports to Sobibor (31,092; transport lists from Bundesarchiv Gedenkbuch "Opfer der Verfolgung der Juden unter der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft in Deutschland 1933-1945" - supposing that the Höfle telegram included also non-Polish Jews deported earlier to Ghettos in the Generalgouvernement but excluded direct transports from outside to the extermination camps).
• minus Theresienstadt deportations to Ostland, the Lublin area (w/o direct transports to Treblinka, Sobibor) and registered prisoners in Auschwitz from Theresienstadt transports (22,602; deportation list here and Czech, Kalendarium -  the subtraction is done to be on the safe side, assuming Korherr had fully accounted for the Theresienstadt deportations,  though this is uncertain)

The figure for France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway, Slowakia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Greece

• minus selections at Cosel (8,188; Korherr report)
• minus registered prisoners in Auschwitz (56,419; Czech, Kalendarium)
• minus selections of Slovakian Jews from direct transports for Majdanek (ca. 4,000; Schwindt, Das Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslager Majdanek, p. 106)
• minus transports from Slovakia to Lublin area, w/o direct transports to Sobibor (29,863; Büchler, The Deportation of Slovakian Jews to the Lublin District of Poland in 1942, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2, p. 151-166, 1991)

The "evacuated" Jewish People

The Nazis deemed most of Europe’s Jewish population unfit for work (e.g. due to antisemitic prejudice, poor physical condition due to harsh ghetto living conditions, intention for heavy forced labor, such as road construction or armament manufacturing). Moreover, many Jews considered fit for work were either excluded from deportations or removed from transports, leaving the majority of Jews deported to Auschwitz (excluding those selected at Cosel or registered in the camp), Belzec, Kulmhof, Sobibor, and Treblinka classified as unfit for forced labor by Nazi standards. In the occupied Soviet territories, the "evacuations" (i.e., killings attributed to the Einsatzgruppen) were often conducted against entire Jewish populations without selection for labor.

The following section reproduces a number of relevant sources.

Joseph Goebbels noted in his diary entry of 27 March 1942:

"From the General Government, starting at Lublin, the Jews are now being deported to the east. A fairly barbaric procedure not to be described in more detail is used, and there is not much left of the Jews themselves. In general, one can say that 60% of them have to be liquidated, while only 40% can still be used for work."

(Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945, Volume 9, p. 231).


On 23 June 1942, Viktor Brack expressed towards Heinrich Himmler that at least 20-30% of the European Jews can be employed for labour:

"In my opinion, from about 10 million European Jews there are at least 2-3 million men and women very well fit for work. In view of the extraordinary difficulties that the labor question poses to us, I am of the opinion that in any case we should take and maintain these 2-3 million. However, this is only possible if you make them incapable of reproduction at the same time."

(BArch NS 19/1583)


The Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller estimated with 20 to 30% Jews fit for work (deportations from Bialystok, Theresienstadt, Holland and Berlin to Auschwitz) in a telex to Heinrich Himmler of 16 December 1942:

"The number of 45,000 people who are unable to work (old Jews and children) is included. If an appropriate scale is applied, at least 10,000 to 15,000 workers are required to retire the arriving Jews in Auschwitz."

(Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945, Volume 16, p. 210).


Memo of the official for population policy in the district Lublin of 27 March 1942:

"1.) It would be useful to divide the Jewish transports coming to the Lublin district into workable and non-workable Jews at the departure station. If this distinction at the departure station is not possible, one might have to proceed to separate the transport in Lublin according to the above-mentioned criteria.

2.) Unfit Jews all come to Belzec, the outermost border station in the Zamosz district."

(Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945, Volume 9, p. 219)


Minutes of the 5th working meeting of the department heads in Krakow on 11 May 1942:

"As State Secretary Dr. Bühler reports that, according to recent news, the plan is to dissolve the Jewish ghettos, keep the Jews who are fit for work and continue to deport the rest of them to the east."

(Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945, Volume 9, p. 278)


Minutes of the police meeting in Krakow on 18 June 1942:

"The Jewish question is settled in the city of Lublin. The previous Jewish quarter has been evacuated and the able-bodied Jews are housed outside the city in a special district.

[...]

In Radom and Czestochowa, Jewish workers will have to be retained for the armaments industries. Of course, the immediate family members of these workers have to be left behind as well, but everyone else will be resettled."

(Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945, Volume 9, p. 291, 293)


Letter from the Department of Internal Administration to the SS and police leader Galicia in Lemberg of 12 May 1942:

"Subject: Resettlement of Jews.

As a result of the concentration of nearly 1,100 male Jews from the cities of Sadowa-Wisznia, Grodek, Janow and Jaworow and the surrounding towns, a number of Jewish families have lost their breadwinner. Since the Jewish councils no longer have any welfare funds, the remaining families burden of public welfare of the communities.

In view of the low financial capacity of the municipal administrations that are just being set up, I have to ask to take into account the mentioned towns as far as possible when the resettlements continue and that the Kreishauptmann in Lemberg-Land knows on which day and at which stations wagons can be made available for the removal of the families who have stayed behind and are proposed for resettlement." 

(Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945, Volume 9, p. 281-282)


Instructions of the commissioner for the resettlement to the Jewish Council in Warsaw of 22 July 1942:

 "All Jewish persons, regardless of their age and gender, who live in Warsaw are resettled to the east. The following are excluded from the resettlement:

a) All Jewish persons who are employed by the German authority or branch offices and can provide proof of this;

b) all Jewish persons who belong to the Judenrat and are employees of the Judenrat (the deadline is the date of publication of the order);

c) all Jewish persons who work for Reich-German companies and can provide proof of this ;

d) all able-bodied Jews who have not yet been included in the work process, these must be barracked in the Jewish residential area;

[...]"

(Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945, Volume 9, p. 340)


Letter of Oswald Pohl to Heinrich Himmler of 16 September 1942:

"We will take the necessary workforce for this purpose primarily in Auschwitz from the east migration so that our existing company facilities are not disturbed in their performance and structure by a constant change of the workforce. The Jews fit for work migrating to the east will therefore have to interrupt their journey and do armaments work."

(Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945, Volume 16, p. 170)

Sources used for the Map (other than Korherr reports)

Blue swords: Partisan activities in the area of the Befehlshaber des Heeresgebiet Süd in May & June, August 1942, NARA T501/R12, T501/R19, T501/349; Partisan areas according to the map Lage Ost map of 11 May 1942.

Black swords: Partisan activities in the area of the Befehlshaber des Heeresgebiet Mitte in May, September 1942, NARA T501/349, USHMM RG-30.004.

Reichskommissariat Ostland: 

see 2nd source of reference [1]

Reichskommissariat Ukraine: 

see reference [2]. The figure of Jews left in Ukraine has been put to < 10,000 to take into account the possibility of closed formations of forced labour Jews from Hungary and Romania dragged through the area by the respective armies.

White shade of army north rear territory:

see 2nd source of reference [3]

White shade of army south rear territory: see reference [5]

Auschwitz & Schmelt: 45,000 prisoners by 1 April 1943 (IPN GK 196/134, p. 280 & 284), thereof presumably about 10,000 non-Jews and 50,570 prisoners in the Schmelt camps (Korherr report).


last edited: 14/02/2020 (added label "occupied Russian East" to map)