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There is no doubt that the Einsatzgruppen killed Jews. The question is
how many and why.

As far as the number of Jews killed in this way, traditional
historians usually cite the number of about 1 million, some jack it up
to 2 million. Hilberg cites a handful of documents to support the
figure of 900,000, to which he arbitrarily added a few hundred
thousand more. At the Einsatzgruppen trial in Fall, 1947, about 200
reports were submitted as proof that these groups were killing Jews,
but insofar as they were prepared in Berlin for the purposes of the
Nazi bureaucracy it is likely that they are inaccurate, and they were
said to be inaccurate by all of the Einsatzgruppen personnel on trial.
Nevertheless the totals of these reports is about a half a million,
and even if they were exaggerated by half, which Ohlendorf claimed, we
are still looking at a couple of hundred thousands of Jewish people
slain. Greater exactitude is probably achievable but no one has ever
tried to reconcile the totals with all other available data.

As to cause, it appears that the Jewish people were oftentimes killed
as hostages, that is, if the Wehrmacht or other military agency ran
into any partisan or saboteur activity, the local Jewish populations
were likely to be rounded up and shot, even though there might not
have been any evidence that they were involved in sabotage or partisan
activity. In addition, according to the testimonies and statements at
the Einsatzgruppen trial, and subsequent trials, it appears that often
a Jewish community would be rounded up and shot because it was
believed that they were natural communist sympathizers or potential
partisans. Of course, in that latter case the Einsatzgruppen or their
militias were engaging in simple mass murder, however much it was
dressed up in the need for rear area security.

The severest massacres appear to have taken place in the Baltics. In
the first seven months of the campaign, something like 140,000 Jewish
people were shot, either by the Einsatzgruppen or their local helpers.
These massacres constitute the kernel of truth out of which the rest
of the Holocaust story has unfolded.

One word about the "Holocaust Lobby." There are groups, frequently
Jewish groups, that use the Holocaust to draw attention to themselves,
their political agendas, or to raise money. Such groups often repeat
elements of the Holocaust narrative to get attention, and in the
process they usually cite the more spectacular elements, which frankly
are usually the elements which are not true. And so we hear about the
gas chambers, or the extermination plan, or the six million, all of
which are unsubstantiated legends. However, it is going too far to
accuse this "lobby" of telling lies. It is doubtful that they know
they are telling lies. They are simply living in a fantasy world where
time stopped in 1945 and reality is whatever the war propaganda tells
them it is. Eventually, they will grow out of it. Let's just hope they
do before any more people get hurt in the current efforts to suppress
revisionism.