World Jewish population figures released before Holocaust Memorial Day

Numbers are just a bit under the world Jewish population on the eve of the Holocaust.

By David Hellerman, World Israel News

At the end of 2020, the world’s Jewish population reached 15.2 million according to figures released by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics on Monday.

The CBS releases its annual findings on the Jewish population ahead of of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), which begins on Wednesday night.

Of the world’s 15.2 million Jews, 6.9 million or 45 percent live in Israel.

The next largest Jewish populations are in the U.S. (six million), France (445,000), Canada (393,000), the United Kingdom (292,000), followed by Argentina (175,000) Russia (150,000) and Germany and Australia (both at 118,000).

According to the CBS, there were 16.6 million Jews in the world in 1939, the year World War II broke out.