More Catholics Died at Auschwitz than Jews
FROM The Holocaust Encyclopedia (Academic Research Media Group, 2025):
The Auschwitz Death Books (German: Sterbebücher) are death registers prepared under the responsibility of the Political Department of the Auschwitz Camp (comprising the Main Camp, Birkenau, and all the subcamps). These books contained the death certificates of the inmates who had been admitted and registered at the camp, and who subsequently died for whatever reasons, executions included. When a maximum of 1,500 of these single-sheet certificates had been issued, they were bound as hard-cover volumes. Three copies of each death certificate existed. One remained in the camp, while two others were sent to superior departments.
When the Auschwitz Camp was evacuated in mid-January 1945, these Death Books were taken to the Gross-Rosen Camp, where they were abandoned when the Germans retreated from that town. Soviet authorities found them there eventually. From a series of communications between Soviet agencies, we know that they found 80 volumes, which were sent to Moscow with all the other archival material captured. When the Soviet Union/Russia released the German wartime documents it still had in its archives during the early 1990s, only 46 of the original 80 volumes were left, covering the time from mid-1941 to the end of 1943 with some gaps. Considering the rampant corruption in post-collapse Russia, the remaining volumes might have been sold on the black market. One more volume was recovered elsewhere. The rest have not been recovered to this day. (more…)

