This is an updated version of a Facebook "note" I wrote earlier this year. I was reminded of it this morning as I began reading "The Zookeeper's Wife," a story based in WWII Poland, and decided to post it to my blog.
Sometimes, looking at numbers is the only way we (or maybe just I) can attempt to truly comprehend the scale and totality of major historical events. World War II is this way. We know so many were murdered, but it seems that the more generalities we hear about it, the less we understand the gravity, which is always dangerous. As a history major with a focus on modern European history, I have heard and memorized so much about World War II and the decades surrounding the war that over the years I (unwittingly) adopted a deadened mindset, an emotional detachment to the staggering facts that emerged after the bloody dust settled - until I took Jordanna Bailkin's wonderful "20th Century Europe" class. Below are some of the more shocking overarching statistics Professor Bailkin presented that really reinstated that sense of terrible awe that we must always keep with us if we are to keep these horrors from happening again. As Churchill himself pondered in 1947, "What is Europe now? A rubble heap...."
In the Warsaw Ghetto, 0.5 million people were crammed into 1 square mile.
1/3rd of the Jewish population of the WORLD was killed in the war years.
66% of all WWII deaths were CIVILIAN (compared to 5% of WWI deaths).
The Soviet Union alone lost 23-26,000,000 people, and 70,000 Soviet villages were totally destroyed.
After the war, the average Soviet lived on 600 calories per day.
Britain had 60,000,000 changes of addresses because of bomb damage.
90% of German houses were uninhabitable post-war.
90,000 German women in Berlin alone sought medical treatment for rape after the Soviet invasion.
14,000,000 people were on the road in the summer of 1945.
There were 11,000,000 people categorized as Displaced Persons, and the last DP camp could not close until 1957.
