Jewish Population without the Holocaust

The Holocaust of course is one of the most infamous genocides in history, killing roughly 11 million people. Over half that number were Jews-the most common estimate being around 6 million. My question is, if those 6 million Jews had not been exterminated, what would the Jewish population be today assuming no genocides of that scale ever took place?
 
The Holocaust of course is one of the most infamous genocides in history, killing roughly 11 million people. Over half that number were Jews-the most common estimate being around 6 million. My question is, if those 6 million Jews had not been exterminated, what would the Jewish population be today assuming no genocides of that scale ever took place?

If you just apply the OTL growth rate of the Jewish population, from 9 million post-WW2 to 14.5-17.5 million today, then you get 28million.

But considering most Jews who died were Orthodox and Haredi/Hasidic Jews in Central and Eastern Europe who had more kids than Jews in the west did, I'd put it somewhere between 32 and 40 million.
 
Would there still be persecutions? If not, I think many wouldn't emigrate to what is now Israel, which may have an effect on those numbers.
 
If there has been no mass organized killings I doubt there'd really be an Israel.
Just because there's no death-camps, doesn't mean there's no ghettos, that the Nuremberg Laws aren't passed, and that Kristallnacht doesn't happen.
 
Considering the British were already pushing partition before WWII, Israel is going to still happen.

There was already sizable German-Jewish migration before WWII and the Poles were already looking at using Israel to reduce their Jewish population.

Israel would have a larger Jewish population yet make up a smaller percentage of the world Jewish population.


What's the PoD here? The Nazis decide to be content with sticking Jews in Ghettos? They decide to put off their genocide until after the war?


If the US changes its immigration laws in the 60s still, there'll likely be a wave of Eastern and Central European Jewish immigration. Family-based immigration is going to be advantageous for Europeans with relatives in the US, of which there will be many Jews.
 
What would be the major Jewish population centers without the holocaust?

The OTL centers in the US will likely still be so. Israel might be but that hinges on whether it exists.

Poland likely will be a major center of Judaism. Even if many Polish Jews ultimately emigrate there will still likely be at least a million more Jews in Poland given how high the prewar population was
 
What would be the major Jewish population centers without the holocaust?

US, USSR, Poland, Israel, and France.

There was a lot of Jewish migration to France in the 1930s. I imagine this would continue, with France potentially ending up with over a million Jews.
 
Part of the question of "where" depends on what happens in Poland. Part of Poland is now part of the USSR and the rest is communist (assuming the rest of WWII goes pretty much as OTL), and the communist governments are pretty aggressively anti-religious. Additionally, the countries behind the iron curtain were very reluctant to let anybody emigrate outside the WP.
 
If you just apply the OTL growth rate of the Jewish population, from 9 million post-WW2 to 14.5-17.5 million today, then you get 28million.

But considering most Jews who died were Orthodox and Haredi/Hasidic Jews in Central and Eastern Europe who had more kids than Jews in the west did, I'd put it somewhere between 32 and 40 million.

Fun fact: I was going to make a counterpoint about Communism killing birth rates in Eastern Europe, but Poland's was less affected than most. Birth rates stayed at pre-WWII levels until 1960, then slowly declined to 2/3 by 1969 before stabilizing, more or less (until the fall of Communism completely tanked the birth rate)

I bet Israel would still be as big as it is now, but a smaller proportion of the world's Jews.

Well, yeah. Israel currently has about 40% of the world's Jews (about the same in the US, though this number is falling, and the rest scattered over most of the West and former Soviet Union).

Europe in this situation would have half again as many Jews as the US in 1945, though Israel might end up with more Jews as well - how many more is hard to say, but probably much fewer than those that stay in Europe (I can't imagine Communist Poland being more willing to let their Jews leave than the USSR).

Part of the question of "where" depends on what happens in Poland. Part of Poland is now part of the USSR and the rest is communist (assuming the rest of WWII goes pretty much as OTL), and the communist governments are pretty aggressively anti-religious. Additionally, the countries behind the iron curtain were very reluctant to let anybody emigrate outside the WP.

Not only is part of Poland now in the USSR, but it's the part of Poland with most of the Jews. The question is whether the USSR would expel them with the rest of the Poles (the Polish government certainly isn't going to want to take them).
 
If you just apply the OTL growth rate of the Jewish population, from 9 million post-WW2 to 14.5-17.5 million today, then you get 28million.

Slightly off topic, I once read a report about medieval Jewish populations which notes that even accounting for pogroms etc there weren't enough Jews based on the starting population.

The hypothesized reason was that being a medieval Jew was really expensive. You can't own land which pushes you to (dare I say it) finance and bureaucracy, and elements of worship require literacy, it was really hard to be a poor Jew. So the result was a large drop out rate.

Just mentioning it as a warning against applying initial growth rates and how unexpected things can mess it up.
 
I’m actually curious what the basis is for the presumption of communist domination of Poland in this scenario. World War II as we know it is almost certainly butterflied away by whatever prevents the Holocaust and I don’t know that the USSR or Warsaw Pact would dominate Poland in the aftermath
 
If the Jews are simply placed in ghettos, used for forced labor etc but no death camps, no forced transfers from Italy, Hungary, the Balkans/Greece, then perhaps 3/4 or more of the Jews who died OTL are likely to survive. Although the Polish Jews and those in areas of the USSR that are Nazi occupied will still do the worst. The diversion of Nazi resources, especially transportation, used to move Jews to the death camps as well as the Einsatzgruppen won't occur, meaning the actual military effort, especially in the east would do better - but not in time for Barbarossa to take Leningrad or Moscow early on as the murder mechanism was not in place in spring, 1941. While this might mean the Russians don't take Berlin I don't see them not getting back as far west as the German-Russian division of Poland or more. Bottom line is that most of the surviving Polish Jews (those in Poland pre September 1939) end up behind Russian lines, and here, like OTL I don't see Stalin giving up much ground occupied by the Red Army.
 
If you just apply the OTL growth rate of the Jewish population, from 9 million post-WW2 to 14.5-17.5 million today, then you get 28million.

But considering most Jews who died were Orthodox and Haredi/Hasidic Jews in Central and Eastern Europe who had more kids than Jews in the west did, I'd put it somewhere between 32 and 40 million.
There are also the Arabic and North African and Ethiopian Jews.
 
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