The First Holocaust - The Surprising Origin of The Six-Million Figure

The First Holocaust
Jewish Fund Raising Campaigns with Holocaust Claims during and after World War One

By Don Heddesheimer ∙ January 1, 2003
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Most people believe that roughly six million Jews were killed by National Socialist Germany during World War II in an event generally referred to as the Holocaust or the Shoah. But how long have we known about this six-million figure? The most frequent answer is that the six-million figure was established after the Second World War during the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.

Although it is true that the six-million figure was declared to be the indubitable truth at this tribunal, it is actually remarkably older. In this book, Don Heddesheimer shows that the six-million figure dates back to a Jewish fundraising campaign that started during the FIRST World War and reached its peak in the mid-1920s. During those years, Jewish groups in the United States spread the rumor that millions of Jews in Europe were suffering to the degree that millions had died already, while many more millions would face a lingering death. The New York Times was the main vehicle for such propaganda, which even included well-known buzzwords like “extermination,” “holocaust,” and the now famous “six million” figure.

Although this exaggerated propaganda of Jewish suffering slowed down during the 1930s, it never completely ceased and received new momentum in the 1940s during the Second World War. As we all know today, this propaganda skyrocketed after Germany’s total defeat, as the victorious nations of the Second World War seized upon the opportunity to take advantage of such propaganda and to increase its scope and impact. Heddesheimer’s book clearly shows that the origin of the “six million” figure, together with “extermination” and “holocaust” claims, are Jewish-Zionist in nature and part of a propaganda pattern that started at the very dawn of the 20th century in order to promote Jewish political and financial goals, be they in Soviet Russia then or in Israel today. Since the end of World War Two, this propaganda has increased in intensity due to its political success and the successful suppression of resistance against it.

Third edition with a research update of 2015, also including a list of 276 sources referring to 6 million suffering, dying or dead Jews, and published between 1900 and the opening of the Nuremberg Trials in late 1945.