The 6 million sum is more likely than not a myth. Even conservative historians readily concede that murder was not the leading cause of deaths in concentration camps. If you are to say that disease and hunger were also part of the death toll, then you can raise it to around 5.1 as someone such as Hilberg does, but likewise you must also accept that in the case of the North American holocaust, the death tolls are also very high. Murder in north America is also less than the death toll inflicted by hunger and disease. Combined the numbers go up an awful lot. In the case of the European holocaust people like to play up the numbers, in the American holocaust people like to do the opposite. I guess the people writing the history do it from the winners and losers point of view.

It isn't denial to accept that an event took place. It also isn't denial to suggest that traditional numbers are exagerrated. Nobody seriously believes that 6 million Jews were killed. It fails to factor in emigration that had taken place for a start. Confessions obtained at Nuremberg were from men who had been kept in conditions such as those that prisoners in Iraq were forced to endure. You cannot take at value the confessions of tortured men. Most would accept that. And to then accept those numbers as the official take on lost lives is a bit daft.