The number of victims depends on which definition of "the Holocaust" is used. Donald Niewyk and Francis Nicosia write in
The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust that the term is commonly defined as the mass murder of more than five million European Jews.
[285] They further state that 'Not everyone finds this a fully satisfactory definition.'
[286] According to British historian
Martin Gilbert, the total number of victims is just under six million—around 78 percent of the 7.3 million Jews in occupied Europe at the time.
[287] Timothy D. Snyder wrote that "The term Holocaust is sometimes used in two other ways: to mean all German killing policies during the war, or to mean all oppression of Jews by the Nazi regime."
[288]
Broader definitions include the two to three million Soviet POWs who died as a result of mistreatment due to Nazi racial policies, two million non-Jewish ethnic Poles who died due to the conditions of Nazi occupation, 90,000-220,000 Romani, 270,000 mentally and physically disabled killed in Germany's eugenics program, 80,000–200,000 Freemasons, 20,000–25,000 Slovenes, 5,000–15,000 homosexuals, 2,500–5,000 Jehovah's Witnesses and 7,000 Spanish Republicans, bringing the death toll to around 11 million. The broadest definition would include six million Soviet civilians who died as a result of war-related famine and disease, raising the death toll to 17 million.
[285] A research project conducted by the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimated that 15 to 20 million people died or were imprisoned.
[9] R.J. Rummel estimates the total
democide death toll of Nazi Germany to be 21 million.