When most people think of "Holocaust Survivors", they think of those unfortunate souls who actually went to "The Camps", yet somehow miraculously "survived". They think of the pics of starving, emaciated walking skeletons with shaved heads that are so often flaunted to remind us of "man's inhumanity to man".
While those poor souls were indeed survivors, they were not the ONLY survivors.
To understand how there could have been SO DAMN MANY Holocaust survivors, you must understand the DEFINITION of "Holocaust Survivor" as officially used by the State of Israel and the so-called "Holocaust Authorities":
Haaretz - Apr 18, 2004:
[...]
The two researchers reached radically different conclusions. On Ukeles' count, there are 687,900 Holocaust survivors in the world today. DellaPergola's estimate is much larger: 1,092,000 survivors.
Both demographers relied on the same standard in terms of defining a Holocaust survivor:
Any Jew who lived for any period of time in a country that was ruled by the Nazis or their allies is called a Holocaust survivor
(by DellaPergola) or a Nazi victim (by Ukeles).
The gap in the results derives mainly from DellaPergola's decision to count as a survivor
Jews who lived in the Holocaust period in North African countries (excluding Egypt), Syria and Lebanon. On his estimate, out of the 600,000 Jews who lived in these countries during the Holocaust period, about a quarter million are alive today,
[2004]and about 150,000 of them live in Israel. "When I examined reports formulated in the past by Ukeles and other researchers, I found that
they simply `forgot' to include these Jews in their lists," says DellaPergola.
So again, ANY Jew who lived for ANY period of time in ANY country that was controlled by the Nazis OR their allies
and did not die
is counted as a "Holocaust Survivor" - which is why DellaPergola's estimated ~1.1 million such "Survivors" - still alive - and that was in 2004.
Using this same logic, ANY Jew who lived for ANY period of time in ANY country that was controlled by the Nazis OR their allies
and died
is counted as a "Holocaust Victim" (presumably regardless of whether they were murdered, died from disease, old age, accident or whatever). This reasoning might help to explain how the number "Six Million" was calculated.
Using this (rather loose and ambiguous) definition,
Mr. Hirt
(the liar featured the article), WOULD technically qualify as a "Holocaust Survivor". However, he would NOT qualify as a survivor of Auschwitz, as he had never been there (at least until after the war), so a liar and a fraud he is.