A Shockingly Low Number Of Americans Know Anything About The Holocaust
Today is Yom HaShoah, also known as Holocaust Remembrance Day, an occasion to commemorate the 6 million Jews who were killed in the worst genocide in history. This year's Yom HaShoah is also an occasion to freak out over the fact that millions of Americans have never heard of the Holocaust.
A new study from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also known simply as the Claims Conference, shows a shockingly low level of Holocaust awareness among Americans, and especially among young Americans. (The Claims Conference hired a consulting firm to survey a random, demographically representative sample of 1350 Americans via phone and online.) Among the most distressing findings:
- 11% of adults, and 22% of millennials (defined as those between 18 and 34), haven't heard of or aren't sure if they've heard of the Holocaust.
- 31% of adults, and 41% of millennials, believe 2 million or fewer Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
- 37% of adults could name Poland as a country where the Holocaust occurred. (More than half of all the Jewish people killed in the Holocaust were from Poland.)
- 45% of adults, and 49% of millennials, could not name a concentration camp.
- 41% of adults, and 66% of millennials, could not correctly identify Auschwitz as a concentration camp.
- 15% of adults think people should be allowed to use Nazi symbols or slogans, and 11% of adults think it's acceptable to hold Neo-Nazi views.
These numbers are shocking, but they're not out of line with what other Holocaust awareness surveys have found. In a 2014 global study, the Anti-Defamation League found that 10% of American adults hadn't heard of the Holocaust. In a 2005 survey, 33% of Americans were able to select the correct number of Jews killed in the Holocaust and 44% were able to identify Auschwitz, Dachau and Treblinka as the names of concentration camps. Even going back decades, a 1985 survey found that only 69% of Americans could correctly say what the Holocaust was in their own words.
There's one silver lining to the new study: 93% of the people surveyed said all students should learn about the Holocaust in school. We strongly agree. And might we suggest remedial classes for adults, too?
