With everyone all in a dither about the recent Holocaust summit in Iran, I thought that this debate regarding how many Jews died in the Holocast could be easily answered by using basic math skills.

All we gotta do to find out how many Jews died in the World War II Holocaust -- and, at a time of progress and enlightenment on a modern "civilized" continent like Europe, not even ONE of them should have been killed -- is to find out how many Jews were in Europe in 1933 (arbitrary year) and then subtract from that the number of Jews who immigrated or escaped Europe before it was too late. Then whatever number of unaccounted-for Jews we have left will be the sad tally of all those who fell as victims of the Holocaust -- whether as a result of war, starvation, gas chambers, overwork or whatever. Then you'd have your answer once and for all.

And part of that horrendous answer should be this -- that "war" is always a disaster and should be avoided at all costs because innocent people DIE whenever there is a war. And only sadists, greedy bastards and madmen profit from "war".

Someone just e-mailed me some interesting information. And if their statistics are correct, apparently 1,000,000 Jews died in the Soviet Union during World War II under Stalin's watch. Is that 1,000,000 being included in the Nazi death count? And did or did not Nazis kill these Jews? Or was it Stalin? Are the Nazis being blamed for something Stalin did -- not that the Nazis were saints. Au contraire. But the one with the worst press always goes down in history as the culprit and that miserable cur Stalin apparently must have had better PR than that miserable cur Hitler.

Have historians already explored the above-mentioned statistical and demographic possibilities of settling the Holocaust question once and for all? And, if not, maybe some Ph.D in some university somewhere could put his or her thinking cap on, do the math -- and send the answer to that guy in Iran.

And maybe Humankind could finally -- once and for all -- learn the true lesson of that terrible Holocaust tragedy -- that killing human beings is barbaric, uncivilized and just plain WRONG.

The only way that the men, women and children who died in the Holocaust might not have died in vain is if we the living have finally learned something from their tragic deaths -- that thou shalt not kill!