One-fifth of millennials do not know what Auschwitz was, according to a new report. And more than half of Americans believe that something like the Holocaust could happen again.
Image: DW/A. Grunau
Advertisement
A study published by the Claims Conference on Thursday, Holocaust Remembrance Day, has proven why remembrance culture is ever more necessary as time goes on. According to a comprehensive survey of US adults, there are significant gaps of knowledge about the Holocaust that are even more severe amongst millennials than their parents.
"The Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Study found that seven out of 10 Americans (70 percent) say fewer people seem to care about the Holocaust than they used to and a majority (58 percent) believe something like the Holocaust could happen again," wrote the authors of the study, carried out for the Claims Conference by research firm Schoen Consulting.
Even more damning to the state of Holocaust education was the finding that over one-fifth of millennials, or people born roughly between 1985 and 2000, either didn't know or weren't sure what Auschwitz was.
Nearly half of millennials (49 percent) could not identify a single concentration camp. The number was not much higher for all US adults at 45 percent.
One-third of adults believe less than 2 million Jews perished
But the most disturbing finding of the study concerned the conspiracy theory that the number of victims of the Holocaust is far lower than historical records maintain.
According to the best estimations of historians, based on the copious records kept by Nazi Germany, as well as eyewitness testimony from survivors, locals and high-ranking Nazis themselves, there were 17 million victims of the Holocaust, with the largest single group targeted being the roughly 6 million Jews who perished.
'I speak for the dead'
12:04
This browser does not support the video element.
Questioning the number of victims has long been a character of Holocaust denial. While in this case it could be more due to ignorance than denial, the study found that nearly one third of American adults, 31 percent, believed that fewer than two million Jews were killed, and for millennials the number was 41 percent.
One hopeful data point in the study was that an overwhelming majority of all Americans (93 percent) agreed that the history of the Holocaust should be taught in schools.
However, they seemed unware of the country's own neo-Nazi problem, and while 68 percent believed anti-Semitism existed in the United States today, only 34 percent thought that there were "many" neo-Nazis in the country. A Washington Post poll conducted in the wake of white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer found that 9 percent of Americans thought there was no problem in holding neo-Nazi or white supremacist views – this equates to about 22 million people.
The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, or Claims Conference, was founded in 1951 to ensure that Jewish families and Holocaust survivors received reparations and recovered property from Germany. Today it works with organizations for Holocaust survivors and memorial projects. In the mid-2000s it came under fire for the high salaries paid out to executives and exorbitant management expenses at the expense of welfare assistance for survivors.
'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27. Numerous memorials across Germany ensure the millions of victims are not forgotten.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/M. Schreiber
Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site
A large sculpture stands in front of Dachau. Located just outside Munich, it was the first concentration camp opened by the Nazi regime. Just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power, it was used by the paramilitary SS Schutzstaffel to imprison, torture and kill political opponents of the regime. Dachau also served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi camps that followed.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Wannsee House
The villa on Berlin's Wannsee lake was pivotal in the planning of the Holocaust. Fifteen members of the Nazi government and the SS Schutzstaffel met here on January 20, 1942 to devise what became known as the "Final Solution," the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. In 1992, the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held was turned into a memorial and museum.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Holocaust Memorial in Berlin
Located next to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated 60 years after the end of World War II on May 10, 2005, and opened to the public two days later. Architect Peter Eisenman created a field with 2,711 concrete slabs. An attached underground "Place of Information" holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Memorial to Persecuted Homosexuals
Not too far from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, another concrete memorial honors the thousands of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The 4-meter high (13-foot) monument, which has a window showing alternately a film of two men or two women kissing, was inaugurated in Berlin's Tiergarten on May 27, 2008.
Image: picture alliance/Markus C. Hurek
Documentation center on Nazi Party rally grounds
Nuremberg hosted the biggest Nazi party propaganda rallies from 1933 until the start of World War II. The annual Nazi Party congress, as well as rallies with as many as 200,000 participants, took place on the 11-square-kilometer (4.25-square-mile) area. Today, the unfinished Congress Hall building serves as a documentation center and a museum.
Image: picture-alliance/Daniel Karmann
German Resistance Memorial Center
The Bendlerblock building in Berlin was the headquarters of a military resistance group. On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht officers around Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried out an assassination attempt on Hitler that ultimately failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock. Today, it's the German Resistance Memorial Center.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Bergen-Belsen Memorial
The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony was initially established as a prisoner of war camp before becoming a concentration camp. Prisoners too sick to work were brought here from other concentration camps, and many also died of disease. One of the 50,000 people killed here was Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who gained international fame after her diary was published posthumously.
Image: picture alliance/Klaus Nowottnick
Buchenwald Memorial
Located near the Thuringian town of Weimar, Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. From 1937 to April 1945, the National Socialists deported about 270,000 people from all over Europe to the camp and murdered 64,000 of them before the camp was liberated by US soldiers in 1945. The site now serves as a memorial to the victims.
Image: Getty Images/J. Schlueter
Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims
Opposite the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, a park inaugurated in 2012 serves as a memorial to the 500,000 Sinti and Roma people killed by the Nazi regime. Around a memorial pool, the poem "Auschwitz" by Roma poet Santino Spinelli is written in English, Germany and Romani. "Gaunt face, dead eyes, cold lips, quiet, a broken heart, out of breath, without words, no tears," it reads.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
'Stolpersteine' — stumbling blocks as memorials
In the 1990s, artist Gunter Demnig began the project to confront Germany's Nazi past. The brass-covered concrete cubes placed in front of the former homes of Nazi victims show their names, details about their deportation, and murder, if known. As of early 2022, some 100,000 "Stolpersteine" have been laid in over 25 countries across Europe. It's the world's largest decentralized Holocaust memorial.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Brown House in Munich
Right next to the "Führerbau," where Adolf Hitler had his office in Munich, was the headquarters of the Nazi Party, called the Brown House. A white cube now occupies the place where it once stood. In it, the "Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism" opened on April 30, 2015, 70 years after the defeat of the Nazi regime.
