Holocaust

[flashpig]

This would be a hard one to answer I suppose, but how many Jews would there be in the world today if it wasn't for the holocaust?

There were about 6 million killed, so I suppose I could work it out myself on some rough basis by multiplying the number of living descendents of Oskar Schindler's 1200 Jews by 5000 (6,000,000 / 1,200). But I can't find the number of descendents on the internet. I have a memory that it said at the end of Schindler's list as they're all filing past his grave, but I don't have it on video to watch.

That's the only way I can think to work it out. I know it would be far from 100% accurate, as 1,200 is such a small sample of the overall number, and they would all be of a certain age.

Someone else might have worked it out more accurately too, discounting the number of old people and the likelyhood of infertility and the number of people who might not choose to have children, working out how many generations ago it's happened, and the average number of children in an average Jewish family.

Gah, I'm rambling. Does someone have an estimate for the number of Jews in the world that there would have been if it wasn't for the holocaust?

[Drusilla1S]

John Humphries was talking about this on Radio 4 this morning, but sadly I wasn't listening as intently as I could have been. One of the guests suggested a third of Jews had been killed during the war. However, I cannot remember if he said a third of all Jews, or a third of Jews in Europe. Either way, it's a sickening number.

http://www.holocaust-history.org/~rjg/deaths.shtml

Sorry, to have drifted somewhat, but I also found the enclosed figures very interesting.

[Drusilla1S]

The figures from this site might make your task easier. Maths is not my favourite subject and was my worst GCSE result. The subject still sends a shiver down my spine.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/worldpop.html

[flashpig]

Actually, I guess what I'm asking is how many MORE Jews would there be. Obviously not every one of the Jews in the world was killed.

What I'm curious about is how many people those 6million would have turned into today. As I was getting at in the question, I expect it's near enough impossible, but if each one of them had 3 kids, each of their kids had three kids that makes 54,000,000 grandchildren, plus 18,000,000 children, plus a certain number of the 6,000,000 would be alive as well.

But then a lot of them would have married each other, so it would be less. I'm confusing myself with the maths, and I know it's inaccurate anyway, as not all of them would have had kids, and other factors.

[flashpig]

Sorry, it might seem like I'm suggesting your answers were unhelpful with that last post. Not at all. I started writing my thing before your second post just to clarify the question. The second answer gives a better impression of what the extra 6 million would have turned into.

Maths, although not my worst subject, was one that I was completely happy to drop after GCSE. I think this is obvious from my posts.

[Drusilla1S]

I understood the question, flashpig, but had no intention of calculating the answer because there were just too many variables for my grade C, GCSE to process. The minute my mind realised you would require a knowledge of likely infant mortality rates in all the countries you would find Jewish communities, I gave up.

[flashpig]

So...

11,500,000 1948 Jews turned into 13,191,500 year 2000 Jews, so each 1948 Jew makes 1.147 year 2000 Jews, so the 6,000,000 would have meant an extra 6,882,520 Jews.

Please pick up on this if it's wrong. I'll be having a lie down massaging my overheated skull.

Maths is not my subject.

[andy-hughes]

This is completely impossible to calculate -

you cannot use random assumptions that each Jew will have three children, who will have three children - that discounts a number of factors including -

the number of children who do not survive to adulthood,

the number of those that do that do not have any children

the number of children born who do not reach adulthood

the number of children that do reach adulthood and do not have children

and so on. The variables are infinite, so any calculation is based on a faulty prremise, and therefore statistically invalid.

[colenso]

Ask David Irving....there's millions of them according to him...