The Jewish Population Miracle

Contemporary Jewish population estimates cast doubt on the holocaust.

Sources at the bottom.

One thing which always seemed deeply suspicious to me is the post-WW2 Jewish population miracle.

Jews, a people not known for their fecundity (in general), are, according to the American Jewish Committee and several other organizations that produce Jewish population estimates, said to have gone from around 11.4 million in 1945 to around 14.2 million in 1972.

There's a very handy little tool on github, see sources, a population calculator. So, what would Jewish TFR have to be from 1945 to 1972 to achieve such a staggering rebound?

The answer is 3.2.

And this is with, in my opinion, favorable values being plugged in. Immediately, anyone of any intellectual honesty should look at that and go, "Oh... that didn't happen".

--- The Jewish Population Miracle Problem ---

For example, "age of first birth" is set as 21 by default, but in the US, from the period from 1925 to 1970, Jews had an average age of first birth of 24. And US Jews were definitely more more fertile than Russian Jews at least, and the US whites were more fertile than European whites over this period - so our starting assumption should be that European Jews were less fertile than US Jews.

Anyway, I then looked into Jewish fertility data, and was only able to find such data for Jews in the US, The USSR (Not including Warsaw Pact states), and Israel. The US had the best data.

So the table below may seem a bit confusing, but it's actually rather simple:

• Open this image in a new tab or something, I’m going to be referencing it a lot. See sources at the bottom for where these come from.

The second column is the estimates of Jewish population by the AJC from 1945-1948.

The fourth column is the estimates of Jewish population by the AJC from 1972. There's no particular reason I chose 1972, I simply had to pick some year to track Jewish population "growth".

The 6th column is what we'd expect the Jewish population to be in 1972 if there was no immigration.

The 7th column is taking the 3 A’s Jewish pop in 1945-48, and applying a TFR of 4.0, and assuming no immigration or emigration. This I use as a “sanity check”.

Israel surpasses the 3.2 global Jewish TFR requirement for the great population rebound. But the larger starting Jewish populations in the USSR and US would have fallen (Column 6).

This puts a gap between expected and AJC claimed Jewish populations in the US and USSR at 2.575 million based on their TFR. Where are these Jews coming from? Must be mass immigration.

Mass immigration of Jews to the USSR seems ridiculous, and even if we grant Jews in Europe a TFR of 2, you're only getting around 353,000 Jews from Europe.

What about Asia, Africa and the Americas? Those have big starting populations.

Well, being lazy, for the 3 A's I just went "F it" and looked at what those Jewish populations would be with no immigration/emigration and a TFR of 4(!). Presumably this population could be emigrating to Israel, USSR, US, etc. and we'll just grant that they carried their TFR of 4 with them wherever they went. Obviously I don't believe this, but I'm putting forth this scenario as a sanity check. Could the Jewish population miracle be explained with a TFR of 4 among Jews in the 3 A's?

The answer is no. In fact, for the Americas, column 7 assumptions (TFR of 4, no immigration, no emigation) happens to very closely coincide with the AJC's estimate for Jews in the Americas in 1972.

Now, in reality, since Jews in the Americas almost certainly did NOT have a TFR of 4, the Americas don't make the Jewish Population Miracle more plausible, but actually less plausible, since it would have to take in Jews from elsewhere - unless you actually believe Jews in the Americas had a TFR of 4.

What about Asia and Africa? Column 7 assumptions only get you to an additional 462,000 Jews.

With Israel, you do get about 256,000 of natural growth from the starting 1945-1948 population.

However prodigious breeders Israeli Jews were, the great bulk of population growth had to have come from immigration. Cool.

Problem: immigration FROM WHERE?

It can't be from US, since the US Jewish population supposedly grew despite being below-replacement. Can't be from the USSR, since they also grew despite being below-replacement.

Basically, the US and USSR need about 2.575 million Jews to immigrate. Israel at most needs about 1.63 million Jews to immigrate, but given the fecundity of the Israelis at this time, it would be less.

Fine, lets be generous and say that Israel only needs 1million. This is another hyper-generous assumption (like I did with Column 7), but it won't matter.

These Jews aren't being generated in the US and USSR, and Israel is not generating enough Jews internally. So, these 3.575 million Jews MUST come from the 3 A's.

So, how many Jews can the 3 A's give? Using Column 7 assumptions (again, these are absurdly, unrealistically charitable assumptions), we just subtract column 7 from column 2 (The imagined 1972 populations assuming a TFR of 4 from the 1945-1948 populations), because some of them obviously stayed behind, and we get 1.219 million.

So even with column 7 assumptions for the 3 A's, the number of Jews needed to explain the Jewish population booms in the US, USSR and Israel SIMPLY DON'T EXIST.

--- Get real ---

So I think I've humored the Jewish Population Miracle idea long enough. Back to reality, there's no reason to assume the TFR of Jews in Asia or the Americas to even be above replacement, and the Jews in Africa are irrelevant since they all went to Israel.

The great mass of starting Jewish populations in the US and USSR, and to get real, Europe, were all below replacement, and I simply don't believe there was net migration of Jews into the USSR at all.

There's no reason to think the world Jewish population increased at all after 1945.

Here's a pinch test, in 1945-48, 77% of Jews were in the US, Europe or the USSR. Jews in these 3 areas had below-replacement fertility. Since we don't have data (or at least I haven't found any) on the fertility of European Jews around this time, lets average the 3 big starting blobs of Jews at 1.6 TFR. I think that's fairly generous.

Now, what would the TFR of Jews outside of these 3 regions, which would be the 3 A's and Israel, have to collectively be to merely OFFSET the 1.6 TFR of US, Europe, USSR and reach a global Jewish TFR of 2?

(0.77)(1.6) + 0.23x = 2

What's x?

3.339.

Not impossible, after all, Asia and Africa were largely cleaned out of Jews going to Israel, and Israel's TFR was 3.549. I'm skeptical of Latin American Jews reaching 3.339, but they wouldn't have to, perhaps reaching 3.1.

Ah... now we're seeing a more plausble story. The 3 A's and Israel, combined, perhaps reaching an aggregate TFR of 3.339, or something close to that, which approximately offset the Jewish population declines in the US, USSR and Europe.

This is somewhat gratifying for me, as it confirms by initial "fuzzy math" based hunch, that I had from eyeballing the numbers before crunching them, which was that "It looks like global Jewish TFR is about 2, and perhaps Jews outside of EU-US-USSR could be fecund enough to just about offset that Jewish population decline".

Just for giggles, what would the TFR of the 3A's + Israel have to be for the Jewish Population Miracle to be true, given a 1.6 Jewish TFR for the US, Europe and USSR?

Well, around 11.6.

--- Holocaust-Preserving "Corrections" ---

Lets not dance on pretense. Obviously this is about the holocaust and this is another piece of evidence that it didn't happen.

The AJC appears to be aware of the problems I just presented to you. They have "corrected" their previous estimates for the global Jewish population:

Now, on it's face, you may go "oh, I guess guys today have a better idea of how many Jews there were then, because they're better at counting, or something".

You can believe they were overcounting Jews in the 1970s, and only later found some genuine systemic problems with their counts, and now these are the real numbers - OR - some Jews realized the problem that the Jewish population numbers from 1970s posed to the holocaust narrative, sounded the alarm, and in came these "corrections".

However, beyond the sheer convenience of these "corrections", there's more chicanery going on with the AJC.

In the 1938 AJC Jewish Yearbook, they estimated global Jewish population at 15,748,091.

In the 1948 AJC Jewish Yearbook, they "corrected" that estimate to be 16,663,675.

But around 2006, the AJC corrected their previous population estimates for 1945-2005, but apparently, the Jewish population estimate for 1939 done in 1948 was just fine!

Moreover, the 2006 "correction" to the 1945-2005 estimates was DOWNWARD, while the 1948 "correction" to the 1939 estimate was UPWARD.

Both of these "corrections", which go against contemporary population estimates, were done is a way that happens to preserve the holocaust narrative.

In 1948, there needed to have been more Jews in 1939 to get to anything approaching 6 million dead. So that number was "corrected" upward in 1948.

And around 2006, the Jewish population estimates in the 1970s would cast doubt on there being much of a genocide at all to anyone with even a vague idea of Jewish fertility. So those numbers were "corrected" downward.

If you believe these "corrections" were honest, and anything but a defense of the holocaust narrative, you MUST believe that

1. The AJC was engaged in systemic undercounting of Jews before 1939,

2. But hit the nail on the head for the 1945 estimate with around 11 million, but then proceeded to

3. Overcount substantially in the mid-1960s through to the mid 1980s!

In fact, the 1945 estimate, which in reality is almost certainly the LEAST accurate given that the diaspora from Europe had just happened and even within Europe everything was a mess, is the only number which is NOT "corrected"! I.e. - the estimate which, by all reason, is bound to be the least accurate, is the only one NOT revised.

Whereas "they're lying" is a much simpler explanation. You don't have to shift gears between supposed "past errors" that go in opposite directions, coupled with bizarre faith in the 1945 estimate. "They're lying to preserve the narrative" is a much simpler explanation, with fewer quasi-contradictory assumptions about “corrections”.

--- The explanation that works ---

There is an explanation that is congruent with CONTEMPORARY Jewish population estimates from 1939-1972. Which is that about 1.15 million Jews died during WW2, in line with the death rate of everyone else in the states in which they resided.

So, world Jewish population was 15.784 million in 1939.

1.15 million died, war deaths (famine, disease, bullets) reducing the Jewish population to 14.63 million.

In 1972, the world Jewish population was 14.236 million. By 1980 it was 14.527 million.

Since global Jewish TFR was at about replacement, the World Jewish population stood about 14.5 million from 1945 to 1980.

So, the explanation that works is that Jews died at roughly the same rate as everyone else in the countries they were in. Certainly the Nazis targeted Jews, along with other groups likely to cause trouble for the regime, just as the US and USSR did, and put them in concentration camps.

Perhaps the concentration camps led to a higher death rate for Jews than just living in say, Belarus or Poland, but this was offset by Jews not being conscripted. Or perhaps it was about the same. Whatever the particulars, Jews died at the same rate as their “countrymen”.

After the war, it was more difficult to assess the Jewish population, and took time for these newly scattered Jews to become visible to whoever was involved in counting them or inferring their existence. This problem of missing Jews was then mostly resolved by 1972 or 1980.

THIS explanation works, it doesn’t require contradictory and selective corrections to prior contemporary estimates to make sense.

It is also the simplest explanation, as it doesn’t require “the holocaust”, which is riddled with improbabilities itself.

Now, you may imagine that the holocaust doesn’t need population data to buttress it, since you know it happened for all manner of other reasons. Clearly that’s for another time, all manner of things you think are evidence which aren’t (convergent testimony, piles of dead bodies), and evidence you assume must exist but doesn’t (assumption of due diligence).

Look, to a large extent, you can choose to believe what you want, and maybe you want to see some "deboonk" of this for a second opinion. Maybe you think I'm doing something wrong or pulling some trick.

My pre-empt is to just think probabilistically, take into account what you can actually understand, don't be bamboozled by authority since every place and time has its religion.

Addendum:

Another possibility is what I call “throw the issue out the window”, which is that global Jewish population was simply NEVER known, and population estimates are all just constructions aimed at a pre-determined number. This could be because a great percentage of Jews simply don’t identify as such, or that Jews all along have been maybe double all of these numbers, but simply don’t register in any way. I.e. the actual Jewish population is an impossible enigma. If this is the case, then any claimed decline or rise in this impossible to measure population means nothing.

---

Sources:

US Jewish Fertility:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256615124_Sergio_DellaPergola_Patterns_of_American_Jewish_Fertility_Demography_17_3_Washington_Population_Association_of_America_1980_261-273

Expected death rate of Jews in WW2 based on country, page 8:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IdNZ72sVRR4H98zpFnYcgBfC1-qbkV5C/view?usp=sharing

Israeli and Russian Jewish Fertility:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316996959_View_from_a_different_planet_Fertility_attitudes_performances_and_policies_among_jewish_israelis

AJC Jewish Population Estimates:
https://ajcarchives.org/Portal/Yearbooks/en-US/RecordView/Index/3826

Github Population calculator:
https://ile.github.io/population-calculator/