The Dark Side of Numbers: The Role of Population Data Systems in Human Rights Abuses

Social Research, Summer, 2001 by William Seltzer, Margo Anderson

The Holocaust

Six of the ten cases shown in table 1 are associated with the Holocaust. It should be noted that although these six cases were Nazi-inspired crimes, in only two cases, Germany itself and Poland, could the misuse of the data systems be attributed solely to Nazi initiatives. In France, Henri Buhle and Rene Carmille, and in Norway, Gunnar Jahn, the heads of the statistical agencies, took advantage of the political climate of German occupation or influence, to expose vulnerable target populations to further risks by proposals to undertake major new data-gathering efforts to serve both statistical and administrative purposes (Remond, 1996; Sobye, 1998).

In the Netherlands, the effort at establishing a comprehensive population registration system for administrative and statistical purposes was completed even before the Nazi-occupation (Methorst, 1936; Thomas, 1937). In 1938 H. W. Methorst, who was then the director-general of the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics and formerly also head of the Dutch office of population registration, reported on the rapid progress being made in the Netherlands in implementing a new comprehensive system of population registration that would follow each person "from cradle to grave" and open "wide perspectives for simplification of municipal administration and at the same time social research" (1938: 713-714). By early 1941 Methorst's successor as head of the population registration office, J. L. Lentz, had quickly adapted this general "cradle to grave" system to create special registration systems covering the Jewish and Gypsy populations of the Netherlands. These registration systems and the related identity cards played an important role in the apprehension of Dutch Jews and Gypsies prior to their eventual deportation to the death camps. Dutch Jews had the highest death rate (73 percent) of Jews residing in any occupied western European country--far higher than the death rate among the Jewish population of Belgium (40 percent) and France (25 percent), for example. At the same time, Jewish refugees from Germany and other countries living in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation experienced an overall death rate lower than that of Dutch Jews. The best explanation for this unusual phenomenon was that these refugees, unlike most Dutch Jews, avoided registration. The experience of the Gypsies in the Netherlands was, if anything, worse than that of the Jews. The critical role of the registration system in the overall process has been stressed by such diverse observers as the German Generalkommisar for administration and justice in the Netherlands in September 1941 (Presser, 1969: 38) and the British historian Bob Moore (1997).

American Indians in the United States

The example focusing on Native Americans in the nineteenth century involves the use of two quite different types of data systems: the decennial population census and a series of special censuses and registration systems primarily focused on individual Indian nations and tribes. Prior to the 1870 United States decennial census, neither the census law nor the census forms made any provision for the enumeration of Native Americans, although in earlier censuses some Native Americans were covered. With the end of the Civil War, the search for a "solution to the Indian problem" emerged as an important policy issue and the 1870 Census marked the start of the influence of Francis A. Walker on United States population censuses. Walker served as superintendent of the 1870 and 1880 decennial censuses and was responsible for many organizational and technical advances in census taking. Moreover, after the completion of the fieldwork of the 1870 Census and while the compilation activities were under way, Walker also served as commissioner of Indian affairs.