I recently attended one of the excellent talks at the JCC given by Dr. Eyal Fruchter of the IDF on post-traumatic stress disorder in Israel. While his medical points were accurate and incisive to me, he made a pair of demographic statements at the talk and in print in the cover story of the May 29 issue of the Arizona Post that were wrong and worthy of correction.
• He stated that the Holocaust killed half of the world’s Jewish population. Wikipedia and the Jewish Virtual Library online estimate the world Jewish population in 1939 at 17 million. Six million murdered in Holocaust is horrendous, but it was not half of world Jewry.
• He also stated that during last year — 2014 — the world Jewish population again reached the pre-Holocaust level. The same two online sources estimate the world Jewish population of 13.9 million in 2014, not close to 17 million.
These are not small errors, and should be pointed out to the readership of the Arizona Jewish Post. If my analysis is faulty, please provide data to correct me. Shalom.
— Michael Ray Jacobson
