Allow me to interject.
Talking of sources:
How many died, for example, at Auschwitz?
9,000,000
Source: Cited by the French documentary, Night and Fog, which has been shown to millions of school students worldwide.
8,000,000
Source: The French War Crime Research Office, Doc. 31, 1945.
7,000,000
Source: Also cited by the French War Crime Research Office.
6,000,000
Source: Cited in the book Auschwitz Doctor by Miklos Nyiszli. It has since been proven that this book is a fraud and the "doctor" was never even at Auschwitz, even though the book is often cited by historians.
5,000,000 to 5,500,000
Source: Cited in 1945 at the trial of Auschwitz commander Rudolf Höss, based on his confession which was written in English, a language he never spoke.
5,000,000
Source: Cited on April 20, 1978 by the French daily, Le Monde. Also cited on January 23, 1995 by the German daily Die Welt. By September 1, 1989, Le Monde reduced the figure to 1,433,000.
4,500,000
Source: In 1945 this figure was cited by another witness at the aforementioned Höss trial.
4,000,000
Source: Cited by a Soviet document of May 6, 1945 and officially acknowledged by the Nuremberg War Crimes trial. This figure was also reported in The New York Times on April 18, 1945, although 50 years later on January 26, 1995, The New York Times and The Washington Post slashed the figure to 1,500,000 citing new findings by the Auschwitz Museum officials. In fact, the figure of 4,000,000 was later repudiated by the Auschwitz museum officials in 1990 but the figure of 1,500,000 victims was not formally announced by Polish President Lech Walesa until five years after the Auschwitz historians had first announced their discovery.
3,500,000
Source: Cited in the 1991 edition of the Dictionary of the French Language and by Claude Lanzmann in 1980 in his introduction to Filip Muller's book, Three Years in an Auschwitz Gas Chamber.
3,000,000
Source: Cited in a forced confession by Rudolf Höss, the Auschwitz commander who said this was the number of those who had died at Auschwitz prior to Dec. 1, 1943. Later cited in the June 7, 1993 issue of Heritage, the most widely read Jewish newspaper in California, even though three years previously the authorities at the Auschwitz museum had scaled down the figure to a minimum of 1,100,000 and a maximum of 1,500,000. (see below).
2,500,000
Source: Cited by Rudolf Vrba (an author of various fraudulent accounts of events he claims to have witnessed at Auschwitz) when he testified on July 16, 1981 for the Israeli government's war crimes trial of former SS official Adolf Eichmann.
2,000,000
Source: Cited by Leon Poliakov (1951) writing in Harvest of Hate; Georges Wellers, writing in 1973 in The Yellow Star at the Time of Vichy; and Lucy Dawidowicz, writing in 1975 in The War Against the Jews.
2,000,000 to 4,000,000
Source: Cited by Yehuda Bauer in 1982 in his book, A History of the Holocaust. However, by 1989 Bauer revised his figure to 1,600,000.
1,600,000
Source: This is a 1989 revision by Yehuda Bauer of his earlier figure in 1982 of 2,000,000 to 4,000,000, Bauer cited this new figure on September 22, 1989 in The Jerusalem Post, at which time he wrote "The larger figures have been dismissed for years, except that it hasn't reached the public yet."
1,500,000
Source: In 1995 this was the number of Auschwitz deaths announced by Polish President Lech Walesa as determined by those at the Auschwitz museum. This number was inscribed on the monument at the Auschwitz camp at that time, thereby "replacing" the earlier 4,000,000 figure that had been formally repudiated (and withdrawn from the monument) five years earlier in 1990. At that time, on July 17, 1990 The Washington Times reprinted a brief article from The London Daily Telegraph citing the "new" figure of 1,500,000 that had been determined by the authorities at the Auschwitz museum. This new figure was reported two years later in a UPI report published in the New York Post on March 26, 1992. On January 26, 1995 both The Washington Post and The New York Times cited this 1,500,000 figure as the new "official" figure (citing the Auschwitz Museum authorities).
1,471,595
Source: This is a 1983 figure cited by Georges Wellers who (as noted previously) had determined, writing in 1973, that some 2,000,000 had died.
1,433,000
Source: This figure was cited on September 1, 1989 by the French daily, Le Monde, which earlier, on April 20, 1978, had cited the figure at 4,000,000.
1,250,000
Source: In the book, The Destruction of the European Jews, by Raul Hilberg (1985).
1,100,000 to 1,500,000
Source: Sources for this estimate are Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum in their 1984 book, Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. This estimate was later also cited by Walter Reich, former director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, writing in The Washington Post on September 8, 1998. The upper figure of 1,500,000 is (the new) "official" figure as now inscribed at Auschwitz, with the earlier figure of 4,000,000 having been removed from the memorial at the site of the former concentration camp.
1,000,000
Source: Jean-Claude Pressac, writing in his 1989 book Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers. This is interesting since he wrote his book to repudiate so-called "Holocaust deniers" who were called that precisely because they had questioned the numbers of those who had died at Auschwitz.
900,000
Source: Reported on August 3, 1990 11, by Aufbau, a Jewish newspaper in New York.
800,000 to 900,000
Source: Reported by Gerald Reitlinger in his book, The Final Solution.
775,000 to 800,000
Source: Jean-Claude Pressac's revised figure, put forth in his 1993 book, The Crematoria of Auschwitz: The Mass Murder's Machinery, scaling down his earlier claim of 1,000,000 dead.
630,000 to 710,000
Source: In 1994 Pressac scaled his figure down somewhat further; this is the figure cited in the German language translation of Pressac's 1993 book originally published in French. Again, substantially less than Pressac's 1989 figure of 1,000,000.
135,000 to 140,000
Source: This is an estimate based on documents held by the International Tracing Service of the Red Cross. It is known that International Tracing Service has a complete set of registration documents. This is thought to include a complete set of roll-call data which includes twice daily tallies of those who died. Although the International Tracing Service of the Red Cross has such records, they have never officially published an accurate count of those who died, or even an accurate report as to exactly which documents they hold. However, totals from these records have been obtained by various interested parties.
The estimate of 135,000 is roughly corroborated by the "Auschwitz death books." The death books themselves are wartime German camp records, which were captured by the Soviets towards the end of the war, and hidden in Soviet achieves, until released to the Red Cross in 1989.
The death books consist of 46 volumes which document each death at Auschwitz (each death certificate consists of the deceased person's full name, profession and religion, date and place of birth, pre-Auschwitz residence, parents' names, time of death, and cause of death as determined by a camp physician). The records for the most important years, 1942 and 1943, are almost complete (there are also a few volumes for the year 1941, but none for the year 1944 or January 1945 (when Auschwitz was evacuated)).
Translation: no one fucking knows. It sure is funny how the number drops over the years, though.