What Is Holocaust Denial? III 1-27-18

http://lukeford.net/blog/?p=120141 Recorded Jan. 27, 2018: From Haaretz:

One of the most well-known, if not iconic, facts known about the Holocaust is the number of Jewish victims killed by Nazi Germany up through the end of World War II. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is also this number – six million – that Holocaust deniers aim at when trying to discredit the essential nature of the Holocaust.

Where did the number six million come from? And considering the amount of original research that has been done in recent decades, is it still considered accurate by scholars of the subject?

The number seems to have first been mentioned by Dr. Wilhelm Hoettl, an Austrian-born official in the Third Reich and a trained historian who served in a number of senior positions in the SS.

In November 1945, Hoettl testified for the prosecution in the Nuremberg trials of accused Nazi war criminals. Later, in the 1961 trial in Israel of Adolf Eichmann, he also submitted to a lengthy series of questions from the prosecution, speaking under oath from a courtroom in Austria.