I'm going to ask this here because its how i remember learning it, but jews were half of the 11-12 million people considered to have been killed by the holocaust, which we also mean more than just the death camps but also things like general plan ost right? Every day i feel like im being gaslit about the historicity of the holocaust by the right and center and its fucking infuriating

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I can't remember if you're one of the people I complained to before, but it is a real thing to use "the Holocaust" just to refer to Jews killed and not to other groups (and I'd put the total number of victims of Nazi genocide somewhat higher than that regardless). Apparently some places use the meaning you give there, but it's not something that I've seen outside of the sort of colloquial discourse where the precise meaning of any word is a crapshoot.

[–] Biggay@hexbear.net 3 points 4 days ago

I might be, that sounds familiar. Personally I hate that we say hitler did the holocaust and ww2 and it seems we let the other 5-6 million people who died in some of the worst ways imaginable off to the side like some rounding error.

[–] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 3 points 4 days ago

Jews were around 6 million people killed in the Holocaust, whose total number has (in recent years) been concluded to be 17 million. Previous estimates that gave the 11~12 million number weren't accurate because NATO and Soviet sources couldn't be corroborated. After the Berlin Wall came down, historians were able to get much better data, including GPO and Operation Barbarossa.

The number was only updated by various Holocaust organizations in the last decade, so if you graduated high school/college prior to 2010ish, you were still getting the 11 to 12 million number.