Where the six million died
The Holocaust was not carried out in one place or by one method. The roughly six million Jewish people murdered by Nazi Germany and its collaborators died across a vast geography of killing, from purpose-built gas chambers to ravines at the edge of their own towns. Understanding where they died helps explain how a crime on this scale was organised, and it is one of the ways historians account for the total.
Two systems of murder did most of the killing. The five killing centers in occupied Poland, built to murder people with poison gas, account for about 2.7 million Jewish deaths. The mass shootings, carried out by mobile units and police across occupied eastern Europe, account for about two million more. The rest died in the ghettos, in other camps, and in scattered acts of violence. The figures below come from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which compiled them from Nazi records, camp documents and demographic studies. Many are minimum estimates, so the true totals may be higher.
The full breakdown
The chart below sets out the estimated number of Jewish victims by location and method of death. It ranges from the largest categories, the shootings in the Soviet Union and the gas chambers of Auschwitz, down to individual camps and regional operations.
Two dominant categories: the mass shootings in the occupied Soviet Union and the Auschwitz gas chambers together account for well over two million of the deaths.
At the top of the list are the shooting operations and gas wagons in the occupied Soviet Union, which killed at least 1.3 million Jews, and the Auschwitz camp complex, where about one million died. Treblinka follows with about 925,000, and the ghettos with at least 800,000. Below them come Belzec at 434,508, the shooting operations in central and southern Poland at at least 200,000, and Sobibor and Chelmno, each in the range of 150,000 to 170,000. Smaller categories include deaths in other camps, the shooting of Jews deported into the Soviet Union, and killings in Croatia, Serbia and western Poland. A large residual category, described simply as other, accounts for at least 500,000 more, including people killed as partisans, on evacuation marches, and in hiding.
The five killing centers
The killing centers were built for a single purpose: to murder people, chiefly Jews, on an industrial scale. There were five of them, all in occupied Poland, and together they account for the largest share of the deaths.
Auschwitz and Treblinka above all: these two centers together account for nearly two million Jewish deaths.
Auschwitz-Birkenau was the deadliest, with about one million Jewish victims, most gassed within hours of arrival. Treblinka killed about 925,000 in little more than a year. Belzec accounts for 434,508, a figure known with unusual precision because it comes from a German telegram sent in 1943 by Hermann Hoefle, a coordinator of the killing, which was intercepted and decoded by the British and rediscovered decades later. Sobibor killed at least 167,000 and Chelmno, the first center to begin operating, between 156,000 and 172,000. Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka were the three camps of Operation Reinhard, the plan to murder the Jews of German-occupied Poland, and between them they killed more than 1.5 million people.
The killing centers operated within a narrow and terrible window. Chelmno was the first to begin, on 8 December 1941, using gas vans in the Warthegau region of annexed Poland. In 1942 came the three Operation Reinhard camps in the General Government: Belzec from March, Sobibor from May, and Treblinka from July, each timed to coincide with the great deportations from the ghettos. Auschwitz-Birkenau was established as a killing center in the spring of 1942 and became the central destination for Jews from across Europe. By the end of 1943 the three Reinhard camps had been dismantled and their sites disguised, their work of murder largely complete; Auschwitz continued killing until November 1944, and Chelmno was briefly reopened in 1944.
The Holocaust by Bullets
If the killing centers were the most concentrated form of murder, the mass shootings were the most widespread. About two million Jews were shot, the single largest share of them in the occupied Soviet Union, where at least 1.3 million were killed. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, mobile killing units called Einsatzgruppen, together with police battalions and local collaborators, moved through the occupied territories shooting Jews in more than 1,500 towns and villages.
The killing was close to home and terrible in its speed. Victims were marched to ravines, forests and pits near their own communities, forced to undress, and shot in groups. The most notorious of these massacres took place at Babyn Yar, a ravine outside Kyiv, where 33,771 Jews were shot over two days in September 1941. Because the perpetrators destroyed many of their own records, the exact number can never be known, which is why the shooting totals are given as minimum estimates. This phase of the genocide is often called the Holocaust by Bullets.
The same deaths, grouped by method
The location figures can also be grouped by the method of murder, which shows how the six million victims were killed at the broadest level.
Two engines of murder: the killing centers and the mass shootings together account for the great majority of the six million.
Grouped this way, about 2.7 million Jewish people were murdered in the killing centers and about two million in mass shootings. Between 800,000 and one million died in the ghettos and other camps, killed by starvation, disease and brutal treatment, and at least a further 250,000 died in other acts of violence. The exact totals shift slightly depending on how the categories are drawn, and because so many figures are minimum estimates, but the overall picture is consistent: two systems of mass murder, the gas chambers and the shootings, did most of the killing.
Beyond the main sites
Below the largest categories, the location breakdown records a series of smaller but still devastating operations. At least 150,000 Jews died in other camps that the Germans designated as concentration camps, worked and starved to death over months rather than gassed on arrival. About 55,000 German, Austrian and Czech Jews were deported eastward into the occupied Soviet Union and shot there, far from their homes, a reminder that the killing followed Jews wherever the Nazis sent them.
In the Balkans the murder took its own regional forms. In German-occupied Serbia, shooting operations and gas wagons killed at least 15,088 Jews. In the Independent State of Croatia, the Nazi-aligned Ustasa regime shot or tortured to death between 23,000 and 25,000, often in its own camps rather than German ones. In the part of western Poland annexed to Germany as the Wartheland, a further 20,000 or more were shot. Each of these figures is a minimum, drawn from incomplete records, and each stands for a community that in most cases no longer exists.
The ghettos and elsewhere
Not every victim died in a camp or a shooting pit. At least 800,000 Jews died in the ghettos, the sealed and overcrowded districts into which the Nazis forced Jewish communities. In the Warsaw ghetto, the largest, which at its height held more than 400,000 people, the food ration was set so low and conditions were so severe that tens of thousands died of hunger and disease before deportations even began.
The residual category recorded as other accounts for at least 500,000 more deaths. It includes Jews shot in Poland in the first years of the occupation, those killed as partisans in Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy, France and Belgium, people who died in labor battalions, those murdered in antisemitic actions before the war, and those killed on the death marches out of the camps in the final months of the conflict. Taken together, these scattered deaths are a reminder that the geography of the Holocaust extended far beyond the camps whose names are best known.
How the numbers are known
No single Nazi document lists every death, and the perpetrators destroyed much of their own record-keeping as the war ended. The figures by location are therefore built from many sources: surviving transport lists and camp registers, reports on shooting operations, intercepted German communications such as the Hoefle telegram, and comparisons of prewar and postwar populations. Where the evidence is strong, as at the killing centers, the totals are known with some confidence. Where records were destroyed or never kept, as with many of the shootings, historians give minimum estimates.
This is why several of the figures here are stated as at least, and why some, such as Chelmno and Croatia, are given as ranges. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum notes that estimates may change as new documents come to light. What does not change is the overall conclusion, drawn from a vast and independent body of evidence: about six million Jewish people were murdered, and the Holocaust remains the best-documented genocide in history.
Jewish deaths by location in numbers
A few figures capture where the victims of the Holocaust died.
Each figure stands for individual people, and documenting where they died is part of the work of remembering them.
Frequently Asked Questions
The largest single toll came from mass shootings in the German-occupied Soviet Union, where at least 1.3 million Jews were murdered. The deadliest single site was the Auschwitz camp complex, where about one million Jewish people were killed.
About one million Jewish people were murdered in the Auschwitz camp complex, most of them gassed on arrival. Auschwitz was the single deadliest location of the Holocaust.
About two million Jewish people were murdered in mass shooting operations. At least 1.3 million of them were killed in the occupied Soviet Union alone, in what is often called the Holocaust by Bullets.
Auschwitz-Birkenau, about one million; Treblinka, about 925,000; Belzec, 434,508; Sobibor, at least 167,000; and Chelmno, between 156,000 and 172,000.
At least 800,000 Jewish people died in the ghettos from starvation, disease and the brutal conditions the Germans deliberately imposed, before or instead of deportation to the killing centers.
The figure of 434,508 comes from a German telegram sent in 1943 by Hermann Hoefle, a coordinator of Operation Reinhard, which was intercepted and decoded by the British and rediscovered decades later.
Operation Reinhard was the SS plan to murder the Jews of German-occupied Poland. Its three camps, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, together killed more than 1.5 million Jewish people.
They come from surviving Nazi records, camp and transport documents, and comparisons of prewar and postwar populations, compiled by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Many are minimum estimates, and some are given as ranges.
Yes. The breakdown by location of death is one of the ways the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum accounts for the roughly six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - documenting the numbers of victims, and Jewish loss by location of death.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - Auschwitz.
Yad Vashem - frequently asked questions on the number of victims.