Almost two-thirds of millennials, Gen Z don't know that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, survey finds
http://archive.fo/ICEYM | http://web.archive.org/web/2020/https:/ ... 792448002/
Almost two-thirds of millennials and Gen Zers don’t know that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and almost half can’t name a single concentration camp, an alarming new survey on Holocaust knowledge has found.
The survey demonstrated wide gaps in younger American’s knowledge of the genocide while also showing a concerning 15% of millennials and Gen Zers thought holding neo-Nazi views was acceptable.
“How much of that is based on genuine understanding of neo-Nazis principles and how much is based on ignorance is hard to tell. Either of them is very disturbing,” said Gideon Taylor, president of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which commissioned the survey.
“If people can’t name Auschwitz … that’s something that’s deeply concerning. I don’t think there is any greater symbol of man’s depravity in recent history than Auschwitz,” he added.
The survey is the fifth in a series that looks at people’s knowledge of Holocaust history worldwide as well as education around the genocide.
The survey of 1,000 18- to 39-year-olds in all 50 states also provided the first state-by-state breakdown of Holocaust knowledge in the U.S. In New York, for example, which ranked among the bottom 10 states in an analysis of Holocaust knowledge, nearly 20% of millennials and Gen Zers incorrectly believe that Jews caused the Holocaust.
That sort of denial and distortion around the causes of the Holocaust “is a form of anti-Semitism,” said Gretchen Skidmore, the director of education initiatives for the Levine Family Institute for Holocaust Education at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The results come amid a rise in anti-Semitic incidents around the U.S. in recent years. The Anti-Defamation League said in May that it had recorded an all-time high of anti-Semitic incidents in 2019 since it tracking of such events began in 1979.
Another concerning finding in the Claims Conference survey: Almost half of respondents had seen social media posts denying or distorting facts about the Holocaust, and more than half said they had seen Nazi symbols in their community or online.
Taylor said these results demonstrate how the internet “has given a voice to and amplified Holocaust denial in a way that was unimaginable just a few years ago.”
Approximately 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust after Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime came to power in Germany in the 1930s. Jews and other groups were targeted by the Nazis and their allies on beliefs of perceived racial inferiority. Millions were sent to ghettos, labor camps and concentration camps and killed in mass shootings, gas chambers and from starvation.
“In order to understand the importance of this history, there are certain fundamental aspects of it that you need to understand,” Skidmore said. Knowing the basic facts allow people to then “go to the next level” and think critically about the causes and other enduring questions, she added.
Taylor said that the state-by-state data in this year’s survey will prove valuable for individual states where there can be more targeted changes to how educators teach Holocaust history.
The survey found that 8 in 10 respondents believe continued Holocaust education is important to prevent it from happening again. That education becomes all the more important, Taylor noted, as fewer Holocaust survivors are still living.
This claim that people need to be "Educated about the Holocaust" to somehow avoid a genocide of Jews just doesn't make sense to me. Murder is universally recognized in all human societies as a crime or worse. Why would someone need to be told that Hitler gassed millions of Jews to believe that doing such a thing is not a good idea? If anything, having this stuff shoved down their throat year after year is rather irritating.
Even if we accept the premise that the Jews were Holocausted in a genocide, there are numerous other genocides that are alleged to have ocurred historically. How many young Americans can name details about these? I would predict that if there were such polls (there probably aren't) the results would be that an even higher number of Americans have never heard of these events. If it is important for people to learn that killing is bad, why aren't they taught also about Pol Pot? What about the Mongol massacres and the Soviet famines? Were these events not bad things that also should not be repeated?
Why aren't students also taught about all of the hundreds of expulsions of Jews throughout history? I would suspect that the ADL would declare these events horrible developments that should also not be repeated. How many young Americans can say what the "Edict of Expulsion" was? Probably a single digit percent. Is that not also "concerning"? Nobody seems to care about that
Recommended:
The rapid proliferation of Holocaust skepticism across the world
viewtopic.php?t=12194
Most important part of being Jewish: Remembering the "Holocaust"
viewtopic.php?t=12425
Complete list of Jewish Expulsions / Jews expelled from over 1,000 places in history
viewtopic.php?t=12596
Q: "Why did Hitler hate the Jews"?
viewtopic.php?t=9592