SHOCKING: Study Finds Two-Thirds Of Millennials Don’t Know What Auschwitz Was

Photo credit: Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany
Photo credit: Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany
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A study released this week reveals how tragically little young people know about the Holocaust. The survey, conducted by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, revealed that a shocking  two-thirds of millennials do not know what Auschwitz, the Third Reich’s largest and most notorious concentration camp, was.

The Claims Conference released the study on Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah), with alarming facts about how uninformed people are when it comes to the Holocaust. They found that people lack what once was common knowledge about the genocide that took the lives of over 6 million Jews during World War II.

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An even more devastating statistic listed in the survey is that 22 percent of millennials claimed to have never heard of the Holocaust.

The survey, completed in February, includes responses from 1,350 American adults.

From 1940 to 1945, the Nazis occupied Auschwitz, a concentration camp in Poland that took the lives of 1.1 out of 1.3 million people that were sent to the camp.

CNN’s Jake Tapper shared the study on his Twitter page Thursday, stating, “NYT: 31% of Americans, and 41% of millennials, believe that 2 million or fewer Jews were killed in the Holocaust; the actual number is around 6 million. Forty-one percent of Americans, and 66 percent of millennials, cannot say what Aushwitz was.”

The study also demonstrated a lack of knowledge when it came to other nations where Jews were killed, aside from Germany.

Around 90 percent of the Jewish population was murdered in countries like Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — but only 5 to 6 percent of adults in the United States knew that Jews were killed in other countries.

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The study showed that people were aware of a modern-day bias in America against Jews. Sixty-eight percent of the respondents interviewed said that they see antisemitism in America today, and another 51 percent said that they see a “great deal of” neo-Nazis in the United States.

Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images

There is a saying that goes, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” One encouraging fact the survey reveals is that most people (93 percent of respondents) think the Holocaust should still be taught in schools in the United States. Another 58 percent of respondents also said that they could see a genocide like the Holocaust happen again.

Many politicians took to social media Thursday to reflect on the horrors and pay homage to victims of the Holocaust.

President Donald Trump tweeted, “On Yom HaShoah we remember the six million Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust. With each passing year, our duty to remember this atrocity increases as we pledge #NeverAgain. #HolocaustRemembranceDay.”

Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan tweeted, “Today, we renew our commitment to never forget the men, women, and children, including six million Jews, who were senselessly murdered during the Holocaust. #HolocaustRemembranceDay.”

Jack Prosobiec, a conservative pundit, tweeted a picture of the “President of Poland embraces Holocaust survivor Edward Mosberg today at Auschwitz.”

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/984450668034445317

To view the full survey conducted by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, click here.