THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Maggie Astor
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| Survivors of Auschwitz returned to the camp in January 2017, on the 72nd anniversary of its liberation. In a recent survey, 41 percent of American adults did not know what Auschwitz was. Credit Agencja Gazeta/Reuters |
For seven decades, “never forget” has been a rallying cry of the Holocaust remembrance movement. But a
survey released Thursday, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, found that many adults lack basic knowledge of what happened — and this lack of knowledge is more pronounced among millennials, whom the survey defined as people ages 18 to 34. Thirty-one percent of Americans, and 41 percent of millennials, believe that two million or fewer Jews were killed in the Holocaust; the actual number is around six million. Forty-one percent of Americans, and 66 percent of millennials, cannot say what Auschwitz was. And 52 percent of Americans wrongly think Hitler came to power through force. Despite the gaps in the respondents’ knowledge, the study found denial remains very rare in the United States, with 96 percent of respondents saying they believe the genocide happened. [
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| Photographs of prisoners at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. Credit James Hill for The New York Times |
