TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

Chapter IX: Transit Camp Treblinka 297
Of course, the Jews shot by the Einsatzgruppen, the Wehrmacht, etc. are to
be added to this. It is an impossibility to assign exact numbers to each of these
categories, but the few examples cited here do provide a notion of how high
were Jewish losses from causes other than German killing measures.
The official population statistics of the postwar period give no additional
help. First of all because they come from the Jewish and Stalinist side and thus
were inevitably influenced by the demands of ideology and propaganda, second
because they do not allow for substantial factors such as emigration to
other countries, assimilation, or simply the desire of many Jews not to be registered
as such.
In 1984, an Italian Communist newspaper explained the reduction of the
Jewish population in the Soviet Union, which had been reflected in the censuses
of 1926, 1970, and 1976, as follows: 929
“The decrease of the Jewish population in comparison with the year
1926 is in part the result of the Nazi policy of extermination, partly traceable
to the natural process of assimilation in a country, which numbers
more than a hundred different nationalities and where there is no impediment
to mixed marriage. The shrinkage of the Jewish population in the
decade 1970-1979 is the result of the same assimilation process (in the
USSR citizens declare their nationality by their own choice by choosing
one of the two nationalities of their parents), but also the emigration of
those Jews who have gone abroad within the framework of the Soviet policy,
which favors the reuniting of families separated by the most diverse
sorts of circumstances.”
Insofar as the first postwar census, that of 1959, is concerned, citizens
could declare their nationality without having to produce their ID, on which
their nationality was officially registered. For this reason, numerous citizens
preferred, for various reasons, to assume a different nationality. 930 Together
the other factors already mentioned, this has contributed to producing a distorted
picture of the numerical strength of the Jews in the USSR.
929 Calendario del popolo, no. 468, July 1984, pp. 10247.
930 Gli Ebrei nell’USSR, Milan 1966, pp. 55f.