US Forgetting

From the DW:

"US adults rapidly forgetting the Holocaust"

One-fifth of millenials 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. 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.  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.  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.  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.

^ 17 million innocent men, women and children (6 million of them Jews) were singled-out and murdered by the Germans and their collaborators during World War 2 (that number doesn't include all the other millions upon millions of innocent men, women and children killed by the Germans during the war but who were not exclusively singled-out by the Germans for extermination.) Those singled-out by the Germans for extermination were the: Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Slavs, Freemasons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Roman Catholics and the Disabled) and they were murdered on the streets, in mass shootings in open ravines, in gas trucks, burned in synagogues, and churches, through medical experiments, in gas chambers, through forced labor and on death marches.

The fact that so many people around the world today know very little about the Holocaust or what they do know is wrong is a grave concern and one that every country needs to address - especially through their educational system. I always get asked why I continue to post articles about the Holocaust even though 73 years have passed. The damning percentages of today's population not knowing what happened is now my answer to that question. ^

http://www.dw.com/en/us-adults-rapidly-forgetting-the-holocaust/a-43364480