Anyone who has dealt with the history of National Socialism even superficially knows this figure: six million Jews were murdered by the Germans in the Holocaust. Israeli filmmaker David Fisher made a documentary about it, The Round Number.
The son of Holocaust survivors, who grew up in the shadow of his parents’ trauma and grief, attempts a historical investigation from the first-person perspective with the film. With his documentary, Fisher has sparked controversy because the film shakes the “round number” of six million deaths. Fisher asks why it became, in a sense, canon.
Of course, Fisher does not deny the Holocaust. Nevertheless, “The Round Number” led to very different reactions in Israel. Many saw it as a thought-provoking flick that was provocative in its own way. However, historians have criticized Fisher for deliberately ignoring research findings.
One of the critics is the Israeli historian Dina Porat. The 78-year-old taught at the Institute for Jewish History at Tel Aviv University and is chief historian of Yad Vashem, the most important memorial site of the Holocaust. Fisher also interviewed her for his documentary. The result does not convince Porat. She fears that the film could be misused by historical revisionists.
ntv.de: Professor Porat, the Holocaust is one of the most researched events in history and continues to be researched by scientists worldwide. Why is something from this genocide questioned again and again?
Dina Porat: It is one of the best researched genocides because it is unique in its form. People want to understand why something like this could happen in Europe and what logic was behind it. Why the local population in the individual states collaborated with Germany and why the Nazis saw the Jews as the greatest danger on earth at a time when this small minority was at the same time at the lowest point in their history. But even after many years of research by historians, sociologists and others – and even after the archives in the former Soviet Union opened up thirty years ago – there are no right answers.
With his documentary “The Round Number” the Israeli filmmaker David Fisher tried to get to the bottom of the figure of six million murdered Jews. Can he question this number?
Of course, nobody can forbid him that. Any film producer, writer or researcher can research whatever they want.
The industrial murder of the Jewish people by Nazi Germany and its accomplices is a fact. Why is this “round number” so important?
You’d have to ask David Fisher that. He decided to investigate the casualty count. I was among the historians he interviewed, and we all gave him plausible answers. It was explained to him several times that – based on years of serious research by recognized scientists – almost six million Jews were murdered in the Shoah, but he cut the facts out of his film. It’s not OK.
What do you mean?
I told him not to question the almost sacred number, as memorials like Yad Vashem have done a lot of research on it. In the 1980s, for example, the Shoah survivor and historian Israel Gutman, together with numerous other researchers, wrote a detailed encyclopedia of the Holocaust. In the 2000s – after the opening of the Jewish pavilion in Auschwitz – this study was revised again. I have repeatedly explained to David Fisher that in both cases we had more than 5,860,000 casualties. But he didn’t put that into the film.
Why not?
I do not know that. But if he wanted to investigate and find out the truth, then he should bring all the facts. He even interviewed historians who came up with more than six million victims. He left this out too.
According to Professor Omer Bartov, one of the leading researchers on genocide, one of the characteristics of genocide is that you will never know all the victims.
Of course, Bartov is right about that. The perpetrators of the genocide were not interested in the victims because they wanted to destroy them. But he did not address the question of why numerous survivors spoke of six million Jewish victims even before the end of World War II.
How did that happen?
In December 1944 Rozka Korczak – who had fought against the Germans with the partisan group led by Abba Kovner – arrived in Palestine. She reported what no one believed her at first. In Europe, she had met survivors who were talking about this number even before there was a way to verify it.
Where did the survivors get their information from?
As early as the 1930s, Jewish leaders expressed fear and concern that some six million European Jews were in danger. However, they did not think of Auschwitz and extermination, but rather of expulsion and disenfranchisement.
At that time, Jews themselves estimated that six million of their people lived in Europe? At the Wannsee Conference there was talk of 11 million.
Here you have to add the three million Jews from the Soviet Union. The figures from the Wannsee Conference were incorrect because no country kept an accurate census of its Jews at the time. The Nazis added another two million due to the Nuremberg Laws.
When the war ended, the survivors were certain that the core of European Jewry – half of it from Poland – had been wiped out. A comparison was started as early as 1947 and asked how many Jews there were before and after. Incidentally, the partisan leader Abba Kovner, who emigrated to Palestine, was already working on a revenge plan in 1945.
You have just published a book about this entitled “The revenge is mine alone”.
In it, I describe how the Nakam (Hebrew for “revenge”) organization sought revenge on the nation they blamed for the murder of six million Jews. The book served as a template for the fictional movie “Plan A”.
Her colleague Yehuda Bauer says in Fisher’s documentary that the number six million was a Nazi invention. What is it?
That’s only half of his answer, which David Fisher used. Yehuda Bauer told him that Adolf Eichmann had already reported to his assistant Wilhelm Höttl in August 1944 that four million Jews had been killed in the extermination camps and two million in other ways. This evidence came from Nazi sources and was also cited in the Nuremberg trials.
How many million Jews does Yad Vashem have in its database?
The memorial has so far researched over 4,800,000 Jewish victims whose names and dates are registered. A further million is being sought, but historians are of course aware that it will be very difficult to find all of them.
When does the count start and when does it stop?
No historian can say exactly who was the first and who was the last victim. The count in the Holocaust begins with Hitler’s seizure of power on January 30, 1933 and continues until May 8, 1945.
So it also includes Jews who died of long-term effects or after their return from anti-Semitic pogroms?
It also includes people who died by suicide or starvation shortly after the war. In the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, for example, 20,000 Jews died after the liberation. Other survivors returned to their home countries, such as Poland or Lithuania, and were murdered there by an anti-Semitic mob.
Do the approximately 250,000 fallen among the 1.5 million Jewish soldiers who fought against the Nazis on the side of the Allies also count among the six million?
No, these are soldiers who died in the war.
Does the “round number” actually only have a symbolic or also a political meaning?
The national emblem of Israel is the menorah (a ritual Jewish candlestick with seven branches) with three candles on each side. But there is no connection to the Holocaust, the menorah is connected to the second Jewish temple. In general, there is definitely a fear among most Jews that a Holocaust might happen again. Like in 1967 (in the Six-Day War) and 1973 (in the Yom Kippur War) or now with Iran, which wants to destroy us.
David Fisher says his documentary will not be shown in Germany because he fears the film could support Holocaust denial. Is this flick for historical revisionists?
That could be. David Fisher is an Israeli Jew and son of survivors. He is a respected producer and questions the “round number”. So why shouldn’t others do the same? He himself told me that he would like to show his film to neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers in order to convince them. But he doesn’t understand how these people think. But I’m more worried about the general public. Many young people are not well informed, and if this filmmaker doubts the six million victims, perhaps others will follow suit.
Tal Leder spoke to Dina Porat