A new survey of Americans between the ages of 18 and 39 taken in New York found that 23 percent of respondents believed the Holocaust was a myth, had been exaggerated or they weren’t sure it even happened.
According to the study of millennial and Gen Z adults aged between 18 and 39, almost half (48 percent) could not name a single concentration camp or ghetto established during the second world war.
63 percent of respondents did not know that six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.
The findings come from the first-ever 50-state survey on the Holocaust knowledge of American millennial’s and Gen Z, which was commissioned by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
Survey Findings
• 23 percent say it’s a myth/exaggerated
• 10 percent don’t think it happened
• 12 percent never heard of it
• 11 percent think Jews were responsible
• 63 percent are unaware six million Jews were killed
Read more about the survey here.
“The results are both shocking and saddening and they underscore why we must act now while Holocaust survivors are still with us to voice their stories,” Gideon Taylor, president of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, said in a New York Post article. “We need to understand why we aren’t doing better in educating a younger generation about the Holocaust and the lessons of the past. This needs to serve as a wake-up call to us all, and as a road map of where government officials need to act”
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the World War II genocide of the European Jews. Between 1941 and 1945, across German-occupied Europe, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered six million Jews, around two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population of the time.
