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Adolf Eichmann, the sinister figure who had charge of the extermination program, has estimated that the anti-Jewish activities resulted in the killing of 6 million Jews. Of these, 4 million were killed in extermination institutions, and 2 million were killed by Einsatzgruppen, mobile units of the Security Police and SD which pursued Jews in the ghettos and in their homes and slaughtered them by gas wagons, by mass shooting in antitank ditches, and by every device which Nazi ingenuity could conceive. So thorough and uncompromising was this program that the Jews of Europe as a race no longer exist, thus fulfilling the diabolic 'prophecy' of Adolf Hitler at the beginning of the war. . . .

Adolf Eichmann#20

HistoryHolocaustGenocideMethodologyStatistics

About this quote

What does it mean?
The quote provides statistics on Jewish deaths during the Holocaust and their methods.
In plain terms
Six million Jews were killed by different Nazi methods.
What can you take from it?
Quantifying atrocities helps document historical scale.

Where it applies

  • historical record
  • education
  • memorial

Putting it to work

  • document historical facts
  • educate on genocide
  • preserve records

Questions to consider

  • Why is data important in history?
  • What are the limits of statistics?

Another view

Numbers alone cannot capture human suffering.

More from Adolf Eichmann

  1. The fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.

    Permalink to quote #19
  2. This is a sane man, and a sane man is capable of unrepentant, unlimited, planned evil. He was the genius bureaucrat, he was the powerful frozen mind which dire…

    Permalink to quote #21
  3. About this occurrence, I will jump to my death laughing, because the knowledge of having five million Jews on my conscience gives me a sense of great satisfact…

    Permalink to quote #18

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