I thought this might prove to be interesting (since this is a Muslim forum, just ignore the first part):

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The Sacred Nature of Six Million in the Judaic Religion

Why Six Million Victims cannot be Questioned
Michael Fishwick - 11th February 2009 (Our Lady of Lourdes)


After the destruction of the Temple (70AD), the rabbinic exegesis had replaced faith in the Mosaic Messiah with that of the ‘collective messiah’, which is the Jewish people. Christianity cannot accept the Jewish sacralization of the holocaust without the denial of its identity and faith. The only Holocaust is the sacrifice of Christ. To accept another ‘holocaust’ of salvation and ‘meta-historical act’ next to that of Jesus would be an act of apostasy. Unfortunately, the new Judaic theology of the council, and after the council, has taken hold of progressive Catholics. We hope and pray that this does not pollute Tradition. It is therefore a duty to warn the faithful shepherds.
- Don Curzio Nitoglia, translated from Il Caso Williamson, 28 January 2009

Introduction

Some commentary on the statement of Fr. Nitoglia may be instructive in regard to understanding why the figure of Six Million Holocaust victims is sacred to the Jews.

The ‘unquestioanable’ number of Six Million Jewish holocaust victims is not based upon documented historic fact, not even particularly on demographic estimation, but above all is a mystical number that relates in a fundamental manner to the religious belief system of Judaism.

The New York based museum of Jewish heritage, for example, in regard to "the memory of the six million Jews who perished" reveals that: "Zachor, to remember, it is a sacred obligation" (my bold emphasis).

Examples of religious phraseology in regard to Six Million victims of The Holocaust are plentiful and easily found by simple internet searches.

On a purely natural level a Christian can understand that Jews might consider the suffering and death of Jewish victims of the Shoah (catastrophe) to be ‘Kiddush Hashem’ – ‘martyrs’. Further investigation using the Jewish chabad.org Knowledge base reveals that, for Jews, the concept of ‘Kiddush Hashem’ has a much deeper meaning in that it is like "sanctification of G-ds Name".

What is not so commonly realised, or understood, by Christians is how the Six Million figure relates integrally to the occult teachings that the Jewish religion is based upon.

Before proceeding further it will be necessary to distinguish between two commonly used words that are often used interchangeably with resulting obfuscation of the subject.

‘Shoah’ is an anglicized spelling of Hebrew word that means ‘catastrophe’ or ‘calamity’. That millions of Jewish people suffered horrific calamity involving widespread persecution and many deaths during World War two is in dispute.

Holocaust, by contrast, is a word of Greek origin meaning ‘burnt whole’ and is defined in the dictionary as a "a sacrificial offering that is consumed entirely by flames." The anglicised Hebrew word for ‘burnt offering’ or ‘burnt sacrifice’ is ‘Olah’ (pronounced ‘o-olaw’). It derives from the Hebrew word for ‘elevation’. That the corpses of many thousands of Jews (and others) were burnt in crematoriums in Nazi concentration camps after suffering deaths from typhus and other disease is not at issue either.

What is disputed is the claim that Six Million Jews were murdered by cyanide gas in purpose built homicidal gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps.

If it is true that Jews, as Jews, collectively suffered genocidal extermination and cremation in concentration camps, then ‘holocaust’ is indeed a valid historic, as well as Judaic religious description. If it is not true, then the description of ‘holocaust’, as well as the ‘sacred’ figure of Six Million, belongs entirely to Jewish religious mythology and must be opposed by Catholics both as a matter of historical truth and religious truth.

The enormous amount of data from diverse fields of research that indicates very strongly that homicidal gas chambers did not exist in Nazi concentration camps is not the purpose of this study, and will not be summarised here. Rather, the purpose of this study is to reveal, largely from Jewish sources, that the fabled ‘Six Million’ is a religious mantra recited by Jews as an integral practice of the Jewish religion.

The Sacred Six Millions

The Jewish religion is based upon:

1) ‘Written Torah’ (‘Tanukh’) which consists of books of the Old Testament;
2) ‘Oral Torah’ (‘Mishnah’) which Jews believe God taught to Moses and was handed down orally through the generations until being compiled in book form in the second century).
3) Later rabbinical commentaries on ‘Mishnah’ called ‘Gemara’, which were compiled together with ‘Mishnah’ in the 5th Century and became known collectively as ‘Talmud’.
4) ‘Midrashim’ which are anecdotal stories expanding upon written or oral ‘Torah’;
5) and ‘Kabbalah’ which is the mystical teaching of Judaism, the primary body of which is known as ‘Zohar’.

A fundamental constituent of Jewish mystical gnosis is the practice of Gematria, a type of numerology that assigns numerical value to the characters of the Hebrew alphabet. It involves the calculation of numerical equivalence and relationship between letters, words, and phrases in order to find mystical insights and hidden teaching that the Jews believe God planted into ‘Torah’. Rabbi Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh explains that: "Since the world was created through God's ‘speech’, each letter represents a different creative force."

Certain letters and the corresponding numerical value, are considered in Judaism to have greater mystical power than others because of the frequency with which they are found in ‘Torah’. One such value, the expression of which holds a predominant power in the Jewish psyche, is the Hebrew letter ‘vav’ which has a numerical value of six. As well as its obvious relationship to the six days of creation and the Jewish Sabbath Rabbi, Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh reveals much of its esoteric connotation in his book The Alef-Beit: Jewish Thought Revealed Through the Hebrew Letters. For example, one learns that: "the consummate structure of six (as in the form of the Magen David [Star of David], the outer area of whose six ‘wings’ equals, and therefore folds onto, the area of the inner hexagon), reflected by the six orders in the Mishnah, finds its source in the dimensions of the Tablets given by Moses at Sinai. They were cubes measuring six handbreadths in each direction." A cube has six faces, of course.

The superstitious ‘power’ of ‘six’ in the Jewish mind, can be found, for example, in the fact that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. was purposely designed so that the display floors of photographs and artefacts of the Permanent Exhibition cover a floor space of 36,000 square feet. In ‘Gemtaria’ it is understood that this represents six thousand multiplied by six thousand. At the end of the tour the visitor enters the six thousand foot Hall of Remembrance, which has six sides symbolising the six-pointed Star of David, and six ‘extermination’ camps where ‘Six Million’ Jews were slaughtered. One can also find a collection of six thousand children’s hand-painted tiles. Yaffa Sonenson, a member of the U.S. Holocaust Commission donated, according to a sympathetic review in the museum penned by Barbara Beckwith for the online St Anthony's Messenger, a collection of six thousand photographs.

We learn from the spirituality section of chahad.org in its ‘Letter of Light – Vav’ that: "Six also represents completion, because something that is surrounded on all its six sides – north, south, east, west, above and below – is complete. Similarly we find that when the Jewish people left the land of Egypt, G-d surrounded then with six Clouds of Glory…The number six also signifies the six hundred thousand Jewish men aged 20-60 who left the land of Egypt. It additionally represents the Torah…Thee are six hundred thousand letters of the Torah, and if one letter of the Torah is missing or broken, or cracked, G-d forbid, the entire Torah scroll is declared not kosher – unfit to be read. Similarly, if one Jew strays form the path, or is missing or defiled, the entire Jewish nation is likewise lacking or defiled. We are rendered incomplete…We find another instance of ’six’ when the Jewish people were in Egypt and oppressed with backbreaking work. Pharaoh devised many plot against the Jewish people to keep them form multiplying. Yet the Jews continued to propagate at an unbelievable rate. Indeed, the Torah tells us that the Jewish women bore six children one at a time…Thus the vav teaches us the monumental effect we have on the world by being connected on high and bringing down The Torah to earth in our thoughts, speech and actions."

Rabbi Ginsburgh reveals that the secret of the word ‘truth’ resides in the ‘triangle of ‘six’ and, for that reason, the Hebrew letter ‘vav’ is known as "the letter of truth", its numerical value ‘six’ being "the power which links together the souls of Israel." The triangle of six instantly reminds one again of the six-pointed Star of David that is composed of triangles. It also brings to mind the fact a triangle consists of three sides or three points. Three points consisting of six? 666?

Judaism teaches that God created six hundred thousand Jewish souls and these souls, according to the rabbis, correspond to six hundred thousand letters in the written ‘Torah’. In a translated text entitled "600,000 Souls, 600,000 letters" Rabbi Rabbeinu Yaakov Abuchatzeira reveals that:

‘The word ‘Israel’ can be read as an acronym for ‘Yesh Shishim Ribo Oriot LaTorah’, meaning: "Thee are six hundred thousand letters in the Torah’. Therefore, Israel did not leave Egypt until there were six hundred thousand of them, in order for each soul to be ‘supported’ by one letter in the Torah, as we have written in a number of places…Since the name ’Israel’ alludes to the fact that the number of letters in the Torah corresponds to the number of souls, it follows that when the Jewish People come to count their souls [take a census], the accuser comes and accuses them saying, "Master of the universe, didn't Israel only reach this size population in order to match the number of letters in the Torah which are hintedat in their name? And now they are negligent in [the Torah]!" This becomes the substance of the accusation. Furthermore, the word ‘negef’ meaning a ‘scourge’, has the same numerological value as ‘Samael’, the Angel of Destruction, short two. (‘Negef’ equals 133 while ‘Samael’ equals 131. The missing two allude to the two Torahs (Oral and Written). When Israel are [?] lax in the two Torahs, two powers are added to those of the forces of evil, and it becomes, ‘negev’, a scourge, and afflicts them, G-d forbid.’

Rabbi Zev Reichman, in a partly published online book named Chassidus confirms the rabbinical teaching of ‘six hundred thousand souls, six hundred thousand letters’. In footnote, 19, of ‘Lesson Six, the Body Can Complement the Soul, the rabbi states plainly that Jewish souls are "pieces of the Divine", part of God Himself.

‘The Zohar teaches that God, Torah, and Israel are one. In truth, God clothed himself in the thoughts and words of Torah, and Jewish souls are pieces of the Divine as well; thus Torah, Israel and God are linked in an intrinsic manner. Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev (1740-1810) explained a Scriptural ambiguity with this principle.

‘As God commanded Moses he counted then (The Jews) in the Sinai Desert." (Numbers 1: 19) Once can ask, it should have been written, "He counted them in the Sinai desert as God commanded Moses?" Behold. God gave the Torah to the Jewish people, and the souls of the Jews are The essence of the Torah, for there are 600,000 Jewish souls and 600,000 Jewish letters in the Torah scroll. In fact, the name ‘Yisrael’, Israel is an acronym for ‘Yesh shsishim ribo otiyot latorah’, there are 600,000 letters in the Torah. Therefore, Jews are the Torah, for each Jew is a different letter to the Torah. When Moses counted the Jews he was learning the Torah. This is why the verse was changed from its usual formulation to hint "As God commanded Moses he counted the people", like the Torah that God commanded Moses was the (experience of) counting of the nation. (Kedushas Levi parshas Bamidbar s.v Caasher).’

Examples of the Kabbalistic religious use of numbers relating to ‘vav’, "the power that links together the souls of Israel", and especially of six hundred thousand abound virtually everywhere one cares to look and it become obvious that ‘six’ is related in a very special manner to the Jewish concepts of ‘kiddush hashem’ and ‘olah’, of holocaust. ‘Kiddush hashem’, one will remember, means to the Jew ‘martyrdom’ and the sanctification of G-ds Name". One will also remember that the Jewish religion teaches that Jewish souls are themselves "pieces of the Divine." Therefore one begins to understand that in the Jewish religion the concept of ‘martyrdom’ and ‘sanctification of G-d's name’ is in fact the collective ‘sanctification’ of the Jewish people, of the six hundred thousand souls.

The concept of ‘olah’ is described by Rabbi Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh's teaching thus: "The Sages reply that the olah is first in theT orah recitation. However, in the order of sacrifice the chaiai proceeds the olah. According to Kabbalah and Chassidut, the recitation reflects a drawing down of the Supernatural Infinite Light from above to below – as a person calls to his friend to come down to him, or as a small child calls to his father to come down and join him. In contrast, the actual sacrifice reflects an act of spiritual elevation from below to above – the secret of the sacrifice ascends to the secret of the infinite One."

This ‘olah’, ‘holocaust’, involves a religious mantra of recitation aimed at "a drawing down of the Supernatural Infinite light from above to below."

As a side note, one may ask, how can it be that only six hundred thousand Jewish souls exist when it is evident that many millions of Jews have existed in time?

The rabbinical explanation appears to be that the 600,000 souls are ‘root souls’ and that all other Jewish souls are ‘offshoots’, intrinsically connected and, perhaps, somehow, generated from them.

Some examples of the sacred connection that exists in the Jewish religion between religious recitation of the mantra of ‘Six’ ("the power that links together the souls of Israel"), the 600,000 Jewish souls, martyrdom – Divine sanctification’ that draws down Supernatural infinite light from above to below" and holocaust, may be instructive. The religious objective of this ‘divine’ mantra is obviously meant to culminate in the eventual arrival of the long-awaited Jewish ‘Messiah’:

Notes

70 AD: Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus on the destruction of Jerusalem, the Temple, and the slaughter of Jews – "We are told the number of the besieged, old and young, men and women, amounted to 600,000."
135 AD: Roman historian Cassius Dio is told and records that 600,000 Jews are slaughtered when Rome finally crushes the Bar Kokhba rebellion.
18th Century: Ukrainian pogrom where ‘reliable accounts’ record that 60,000 Jews were slaughtered by Gaidmak Cossacks according to the Jewish People's Relief Committee Report of 1921, mentioned in The Slaughter of the Jews in the Ukraine in 1919, by Elias Heifetz.
1880: The New York time editorial of 27 February states that: "The war, which has for some time raged in Germany between the natives and the Jews, seems rather to increase rather than diminish in intensity…The charge is made that of the 600,000 Israelites in the empire, hardly any engage in agriculture or mercantile pursuits, but that they control trade, rule the money markets and are eating up the country with their avarice and usury."
1900: The New York Times of 11th June reports extracts from an address given by Rabbi Samuel Wise, founder of the Federation of American Zionists, that "there are 6,000,000 [six million] living, bleeding, suffering arguments in favour of Zionism."
1916: The American Jewish Committee publishes a book entitled ‘The Jews in the Eastern War Zone’ in which it claims that eastern Europe is a: "a kind of prison with six million inmates, guarded by an army of corrupt and brutal jailers."
1917-1920: 60,000 Jews were murdered in pogroms in Poland and Russia according to the authors of The Jew in the Modern World.
1918: The New York Times of October 18th carries a full page advertisement from the Joint Distribution Committee of the American Funds for Jewish War sufferers to collect one hundred million dollars to ‘Rebuild Jewry’ and states that "6,000,000 Jews need Help" (Six Million)
1919: The American Hebrew of 31st October carries an article entitled ‘The Crucifixion of the Jews Must Stop!" It claims that "Six million men and women are dying" in what it describes as a "threatening holocaust." This was is over for everyone but the Jew. The knife is still at his throat and unreasoning and unreasonable century-old lust for Jewish blood opens his veins."
1936: Chaim Weitzman, president of the World Zionist Organisation, testifies in front of the Peel Commission, on November 25th, that: "It is no exaggeration to say that six million Jews are sentenced to be imprisoned in this part of the world, where they are unwanted, and for whom the countries are divided into those where they are unwanted, and those, where they are not admitted."
1937: Chaim Weitzmann reports to the Zionist Congress of London that "the hopes of Europe's six million Jews are centered on emigration" according to the document ‘Holocaust Victims Accuse’ published by anti-Zionist Jews.
1943: The New York Times of 2nd March reports, on page 4, Rabbi Joseph Hertz, Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, stating that "appalling is the fact that those who proclaim the Four Freedoms have so far done very little to secure the freedom to live for 6,000,000 [Six Million] of their Jewish fellow men by readiness to rescue those who might still escape Nazi torture and butchery."
1946: The Jewish Black Book Committee, a venture between the Soviet Jewish Anti-fascist Committee (JAC) and US Jewish organizations publishes The Black Book. It states that: "Four million Jews – about two-thirds of the six million who perished in Europe at the hand of the Nazis – were murdered at Osweicim [Auschwitz] and its subsidiary camps."
1948: Rabbi Menachem Kasher, in the introduction to Koi HaTor in HaTekufah HaGedolah, reports a statistic relating to the year of the establishment of the Zionist State. He states that 1948 was the first year in centuries that there were 600,000 Jews living in ‘Eretz Yisrael’.
1948: 600,000 Jews living in Arab countries were forced to flee from surrounding Arab lands to the newly established Israeli State claim the Children of Jewish Holocaust survivors Laos Angeles organization and their political director Omri Ceren, in a press release dated 7th July, 2008.
1948: 600,000 Holocaust survivors moved to Israel during the early years of the State, reports Judy Siegel-Itzkovich for the Jewish Weekly News of northern California, in a story entitled Holocaust Survivors; Handle with Care, on 21st March, 2008.
1967: Rabbi Menachem Kasher, in the introduction to Koi HaTor in HaTekufah HaGedolah, reports a statistic relating to the year of the Six Day War. He states that in the first year in centuries there were 600,000 Jewish males above the age of 20 living in ‘Eretz Yisrael’.
1999: The Independent reveals in a story of 4th March entitled Holocaust Trial Opens in Croatia that the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust states that 600,000 were killed at the Jasenovac concentration camp, but that Croatian historians think that 35,000 died.
2004: Hungary's first Holocaust Museum opens in Budapest on the 60th anniversary of Hungarian Jews being sent to concentration camps. 60,000 names have been inscribed on the inside wall surrounding the museum in order to remember 600,000 Hungarian Jewish victims.
2004: A memorial of the "600,000 Jews who were killed in gas chambers" at the Belzec ‘death camp’ in Poland is solemnly opened on the 3rd June as a Joint project of the American Jewish Committee and the Warsaw-based Council for the Protection of the Memory of Combat and Martyrdom.
2005: The Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem announces on October 10th the figure of 600,000 visitors in the six months since the opening of its new Museum complex.
2006: A New America Media report on 14th November entitled Israel Encourages Citizens to Return to Homeland, written by Stacey Palevsky, states that "more than 600,000 Israelis live elsewhere. And Israel wants them back…About 6,000 return each year." The report further reveals that the Israeli Minister of Immigration Absorption, Ze'ev Boim, was visiting as "part of the six-city campaign."
2007: Sidney Zabludoff tells the US House Committee on International Relations: Subcommittee on Europe and Emerging Threats, on 3rd October that "Currently there are approximately 600,000 Holocaust survivors worldwide..
2008: A libel case heard in Jerusalem District Court, initiated by the Claims Conference, reveals that 600,000 Holocaust survivors worldwide have received over $50 billion.
2008: German Culture Minister, Bernd Numann, and the chief of the German Foundation for Remembrance, Responsibility and Future, Martin Salm, present to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial site in Jerusalem a complete list of the 600,000 German Jewish population between 1933 and 1945.
Should any further consideration be necessary to determine the ‘sacred’ relationship between the Six Hundred Thousand Jewish Souls and The Six Million it is only necessary to remember that ‘six’ is the number of ‘truth’ and represents ‘completion’. It is "the power that links together the souls of Israel" of which there are 600,000. When multiplied by ten we arrive at Six Million.

The number ‘ten’ in the Jewish religion relates to Sefiroi (enumerations) by which, Jews believe, God manifests himself in the physical and metaphysical planes. ‘Ten’ is believed by the Jews to be the number of ‘divine projection’. Therefore, the 600,000 souls of Israel, which are ‘pieces of the Divine’, when multiplied by ‘divine perfection’ come to Six Million.

"The Hebrew word for ‘ye shall return’(TaShuVU), seems to have been spelled incorrectly. Grammatically it requires another (vav). It ought to read (TaShUVU). Why is it lacking the letter (vav) which stands for six?. [TaShuVU] without the vav is a prediction to the Jewish people of ultimate return to their national homeland. TaShuVU in numbers adds up to 708: tav=400, shin=300, vei=2, vey=6. When we write the year, we ignore the millennia. In 1948 on the secular calendar, we witnessed the miracle of Jewish return to Israel. On the Hebrew calendar it was the year 3708. That was the year predicted by the incomplete word (TaShuVu), you shall return. We did return, lacking 6 – an all important 6 million of our people who perished in the holocaust. Yet the fulfillment of the prediction of return in precisely that year implied by the gematria of TaShuVU gives us firm hope that the words of the prophets for Final Redemption will come true as well."

- Rabbi Benjamin Blech, the Secret of Hebrew Words, pp 214-215.

The Same Rabbi Blech who, along with rabbis Barry Dov Schwartz and Jack Bemporad, conferred a ‘rabbinical blessing’ upon John Paul II, in the Apostolic Palace, on 18th January, 2005.