so it can include flight survivors and others who were previously excluded from restitution and recognition, such as those who lived in hiding during the war, including children who were hidden in order to protect them from the Nazis. Numbers of survivors At the start of World War II in September 1939, about nine and a half million Jews lived in the European countries that were either already under the control of Nazi Germany or would be invaded or conquered during the war. Almost two-thirds of these European Jews, nearly six million people, were annihilated, so that by the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, about 3.5 million of them had survived. Those who managed to stay alive until the end of the war, under varying circumstances, comprise the following: Concentration camp prisoners Between 250,000 and 300,000 Jews withstood the concentration camps and death marches, although tens of thousands of these survivors were too weak or sick to live more than a few days, weeks or months, notwithstanding the care that they received after liberation. Other survivors Other Jews throughout Europe survived because the Germans and their collaborators did not manage to complete the deportations and mass-murder before Allied forces arrived, or the collaborationist regimes were overthrown. Thus, for example, in western Europe, around three quarters of the pre-war Jewish population survived the Holocaust in Italy and France, about half survived in Belgium, while only a quarter of the pre-war Jewish population survived in the Netherlands. In eastern and south-eastern Europe, most of Bulgaria's Jews survived the war, as well as 60% of Jews in Romania and nearly 30% of the Jewish population in Hungary. Two-thirds survived in the Soviet Union. In Poland, the Baltic states, Greece, Slovakia and Yugoslavia close to 90% of Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their local collaborators. Throughout Europe, a few thousand Jews also survived in hiding, or with false papers posing as non-Jews, hidden or assisted by non-Jews who risked their lives to rescue Jews individually or in small groups. Several thousand Jews also survived by hiding in dense forests in Eastern Europe, and as Jewish partisans actively resisting the Nazis as well as protecting other escapees, and, in some instances, working with non-Jewish partisan groups to fight against the German invaders. Refugees The largest group of survivors were the Jews who managed to escape from German-occupied Europe before