What Might Have Been: Staggering Numbers
This week we commemorate Yom HaShoah.
Yesterday, I wrote of the devastation perpetrated on the Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. While it is impossible to imagine the impact of the horror on every individual and family, it is worthwhile to contemplate what the population of our people would likely have been had the Holocaust not occurred.
These are my calculations. You may want to read them slowly as it takes a bit of concentration to assimilate the figures.
In 1939, the world’s population was just over 2 billion. The Jewish population was 16,728,000.* At the time, Jews represented nearly .8 % of the world population. This was before the beginning of the Final Solution—the systematic murder of the Jews in Europe.
After the Holocaust, in mid-1945, about 11 million Jews remained.
Today, in 2024, the world population is just over 8 billion, a fourfold increase since 1939. The current Jewish population is 16,783,100*, remarkably almost the same as it was in 1939, before the Holocaust.
In other words, while the world population has increased fourfold, the Jewish population is the same as 85 years ago.
Had Jews grown at the same rate as the general population starting before the war, Jews would today number about 68 million, or about .8% of the world population. Even if our growth rate after the Holocaust had been the same as the world population, Jews would number some 44 million people.
While it is important to contemplate what might have been, it is incumbent upon us to contemplate what we can become. May we bring more Jews to our world, and may they bring more blessings to humanity.
— Rabbi David Woznica
*The numbers are based on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem.