From Pew Forum:
“What Americans Know About the
Holocaust”
Most U.S. adults know what the
Holocaust was and approximately when it happened, but fewer than half can
correctly answer multiple-choice questions about the number of Jews who were
murdered or the way Adolf Hitler came to power, according to a new Pew Research
Center survey. When asked to describe in their own words what the Holocaust
was, more than eight-in-ten Americans mention the attempted annihilation of the
Jewish people or other related topics, such as concentration or death camps,
Hitler, or the Nazis. Seven-in-ten know that the Holocaust happened between
1930 and 1950. And close to two-thirds know that Nazi-created ghettos were
parts of a city or town where Jews were forced to live. Fewer than half of
Americans (43%), however, know that Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany
through a democratic political process. And a similar share (45%) know that
approximately 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Nearly three-in-ten
Americans say they are not sure how many Jews died during the Holocaust, while
one-in-ten overestimate the death toll, and 15% say that 3 million or fewer
Jews were killed. This raises an important question: Are those who
underestimate the death toll simply uninformed, or are they Holocaust deniers –
people with anti-Semitic views who “claim that the Holocaust was invented or
exaggerated by Jews as part of a plot to advance Jewish interests”? While the
survey cannot answer this question directly, the data suggests that relatively
few people in this group express strongly negative feelings toward Jews. On a
“feeling thermometer” designed to gauge sentiments toward a variety of groups,
nine-in-ten non-Jewish respondents who underestimate the Holocaust’s death toll
express neutralor warm feelings toward Jews, while just one-in-ten give Jews a
cold rating. Similar shares express cold feelings toward Jews among those who
overestimate the number of Holocaust deaths (9%) and among those who say they
do not know how many Jews died in the Holocaust or decline to answer the
question (12%). That said, respondents who get more questions right also tend
to express warmer feelings toward Jews. For example, non-Jews who correctly
answer at least three of the four multiple-choice questions about the Holocaust
rate Jews at a relatively warm 67 degrees on the feeling thermometer, on
average. By comparison, non-Jews who correctly answer one question or less (including
those who get none right) rate their feelings toward Jews at 58 degrees, on
average. These are among the key findings of a survey conducted online Feb. 4
to 19, 2019, among 10,971 respondents. The study was conducted mostly among
members of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (a nationally
representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults recruited from landline
and cellphone random-digit-dial surveys and an address-based survey),
supplemented by interviews with members of the Ipsos KnowledgePanel. The margin
of sampling error for the full sample is plus or minus 1.5 percentage points. A previously published report on
this survey explored the public’s answers to 32 knowledge questions about a
wide range of religious topics, including the Bible and Christianity, Judaism,
Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, atheism and agnosticism, and religion and
public life. In addition to the 32 questions about religious topics, the survey
included five factual questions to test knowledge of the Holocaust: one
open-ended question and four multiple-choice questions. The four
multiple-choice questions also were included in a separate survey of
approximately 1,800 U.S. teens (ages 13 to 17). Overall, the teens display
lower levels of knowledge about the Holocaust than their elders do. Like the
adults, however, teens fare best on the questions about when the Holocaust
occurred and what ghettos were. About half or more of teens answer those
questions correctly. By comparison, 38% of teens know that approximately 6
million Jews perished in the Holocaust, and just one-third know that Hitler
came to power through a democratic process. See here for details. The Holocaust
knowledge questions were designed to measure some basic facts about the
Holocaust, including when it happened and who it involved. However, the
questions were not meant to include all of the most essential facts about the
Holocaust. The open-ended question asked: “As far as you know, what does ‘the
Holocaust’ refer to?” and invited respondents to write their answers in their
own words. In response, two-thirds say the Holocaust refers to the attempted
annihilation of the Jewish people, or words to that effect, mentioning the mass
murder of Jews. An additional 18% mention concepts that are more loosely associated
with the Holocaust, including the general idea of death (6%), the persecution
(but not murder) of Jews (4%), or just something about Jewish people (4%). This
group also includes some respondents who reference Hitler, concentration camps,
World War II, Nazis or persecution in general without mentioning Jews
specifically. Just 3% of Americans mention something else, and an equal share
say they don’t know. One-in-ten decline to answer the question. Overall, the
average respondent correctly answers about half (2.2) of the four
multiple-choice Holocaust knowledge questions. Nearly half of Americans get at
least three questions right, including one-quarter who correctly answer all
four questions (24%). Roughly one-in-five respondents do not answer any of the
Holocaust knowledge questions correctly, mainly because they say they are “not
sure” about the answers to the questions.
Jews, atheists and agnostics get
more questions right about the Holocaust
Jews (3.2), atheists (3.1) and
agnostics (3.1) get the most questions right about the Holocaust, answering an
average of at least three of the four questions correctly. (These groups also
rank among those with the highest levels of overall religious knowledge.)
Mainline Protestants, Mormons, Catholics, evangelical Protestants and Americans
who describe their religion as “nothing in particular” correctly answer about
half of the questions, while members of the historically black Protestant
tradition get one out of four right, on average. Nearly nine-in-ten U.S. Jews
(90%), agnostics (90%) and atheists (87%) know that the Holocaust happened
between 1930 and 1950. Similarly, an overwhelming majority of agnostics (87%),
Jews (86%) and atheists (84%) know that ghettos were parts of a town or city
where Jews were forced to live. U.S. Jews are more likely than atheists and
agnostics to know how many Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Nearly nine-in-ten
Jews know that about 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, compared with
two-thirds of agnostics (64%) and atheists (63%) who get this question right.
By contrast, more atheists and agnostics than Jews correctly answer the
question about how Hitler became chancellor of Germany: Three-quarters of
atheists (76%) and seven-in-ten agnostics know Hitler became chancellor through
a democratic political process, compared with 57% of Jews.
Education, visiting a Holocaust
museum and knowing someone who is Jewish are strongly linked with Holocaust
knowledge
In addition to religious
affiliation, several other factors are associated with how much Americans know
about the Holocaust. For example, college graduates get an average of 2.8 out
of the four multiple-choice questions right, while those whose formal education
ended with high school correctly answer 1.7 questions. Another factor linked
with how much Americans know about the Holocaust is whether respondents have
ever visited a Holocaust memorial or museum. U.S. adults who say they have
visited a Holocaust memorial or museum (27% of all respondents) correctly
answer 2.9 questions right out of the four multiple-choice questions about the
Holocaust. By comparison, those who have never visited a Holocaust memorial or
museum answer 2.0 questions right, on average. The survey included a question
that asked respondents whether they personally know someone who is Jewish.
Compared with those who say they do not know anyone who is Jewish, Americans
who know a Jewish person answer about one additional question right, on average
(2.6 vs. 1.5).
Older adults display slightly
higher levels of Holocaust knowledge
There are modest differences in
levels of knowledge about the Holocaust based on gender, race and ethnicity,
age, and region. For example, men correctly answer 2.5 out of four
multiple-choice questions, on average, while women get 1.9 right.3 And white
respondents get an average of 2.5 questions right, compared with 1.2 questions
among black adults and 1.7 questions among Hispanics. In addition, Americans
ages 65 and older correctly answer an average of 2.5 questions about the
Holocaust, compared with 2.2 right answers among those under the age of 65. And
U.S. adults who live in the West, Northeast and Midwest perform slightly better
than those who live in the South. Politically, Republicans and those who lean
toward the Republican Party (2.3) correctly answer about as many Holocaust
knowledge questions as Democrats and Democratic leaners do (2.2). U.S. teens’ levels
of Holocaust knowledge similar to those of adults without post-secondary
education The four multiple-choice questions about the Holocaust also were
included in a recent Pew Research Center survey of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17. Like
adults, more teens know when the Holocaust occurred (57%) and what Nazi-created
ghettos were (53%) than know how many Jews were killed during the Holocaust
(38%) or how Hitler became chancellor of Germany (33%). On average, teens
correctly answer slightly fewer questions than U.S. adults do (1.8 vs. 2.2, on
average). This may reflect disparities in education. Among adults, those with a
college degree correctly answer about one question more than those with a high
school degree or less. Of course, teens between the ages of 13 and 17 have not
yet had a chance to pursue post-secondary education. Overall, U.S. teens
correctly answer about the same number of questions (1.8, on average) as adults
whose formal education ended with high school (1.7). However, one difference
between teens and adults is the relationship between gender and Holocaust
knowledge. While adult men answer slightly more questions right than women,
teen boys and girls correctly answer a similar number of questions about the
Holocaust (1.8 each, on average).
Previous Holocaust knowledge
surveys
The 2019 Pew Research Center
survey is not the first research conducted to assess how much American adults
know about the Holocaust. In 1993, the American Jewish Committee (AJC)
published the results of a study regarding what U.S. adults and students in the
10th, 11th and 12th grades knew about the Holocaust.4 And in 2018, the
Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Study, conducted by the Conference on Jewish
Material Claims Against Germany, asked American adults many of the same questions
that were discussed in the 1993 report. There are several important differences
between Pew Research Center’s 2019 Holocaust knowledge questions and the other
two surveys that make it so that they are not directly comparable (and thus
unable to gauge whether levels of knowledge about the Holocaust have changed
over time). Even though some of the questions asked on the new survey are
similar to those asked on previous surveys, these questions were not always
asked in the exact same way. For example, all three surveys included a question
asking approximately how many Jews were killed during the Holocaust. While the
question wording was similar, Pew Research Center’s question included five
response options listed from smallest to largest: “Less than 1 million,”
“approximately 3 million,” “approximately 6 million,” “more than 12 million” or
“not sure.” The AJC study and the Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Study each
included six response options listed from largest to smallest: “20 million,” “6
million,” “2 million,” “1 million,” “100,000” and “25,000.” (The AJC study
included a “don’t know” option, while the Knowledge and Awareness Study
included “other” and “not sure” options.) And while all three studies included
an open-ended question asking respondents to describe in their own words what
“the Holocaust” refers to, the responses were not necessarily coded using the
same criteria. The respondents also took the surveys in different ways. The
2019 Pew Research Center survey was administered online on the American Trends
Panel, a nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults. By
contrast, the survey discussed in the 1993 AJC report was administered by
interviewers in respondents’ homes. The 2018 Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness
Study was administered mostly by interviewers over the phone, but also included
some interviews administered online. Sometimes when the same question is asked
in different modes, such as over the phone and online, there is a difference in
results that is attributable to what survey methodologists call a mode effect.
In other words, the presence of a live interviewer may encourage people to
answer questions differently than they would if no one was observing their
(self-recorded) responses.
^ This poll shows both good and
bad. It shows that many Americans know what the Holocaust was and who it
affected which is good, but it also shows that many Americans don’t know how
Hitler and the Germans were able to come to power and implement the Holocaust. It
also shows us the current American attitudes towards Anti-Semitism and Jews. ^
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