Americans, Millennials display shocking ignorance of Holocaust, Auschwitz

The study, commissioned by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also found that four in ten millennials think less than six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.

By HAGAY HACOHEN
Neo-Nazis at public demonstration (photo credit: REUTERS)
Neo-Nazis at public demonstration
(photo credit: REUTERS)
A study commissioned by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany discovered that over one third of US citizens (31%) believe there are many Neo-Nazis in the US.
More than one in ten Americans (11%) think it is acceptable to hold Neo-Nazi views and 15%  said that people should be able to use Nazi symbols.
Despite the fact that six million Jewish people were murdered in the Holocaust, four in ten Millennials (41%) think that those numbers are exaggerated and that only two million Jewish people, or less, were murdered. More than one third of all Americans (31%) think the same.
More than half of all Americans (58%) think that an event like the Holocaust could happen again and 70% say that it seems that fewer people seem to care about it.
 
Almost half (45%) of US adults as well as Millennials (49%) cannot name a single location related to the Holocaust despite the fact that Nazis created more than 40,000 concentration camps and ghettos in the parts of Europe under their control.  Four out of ten (41%) did not know what Auschwitz is, the Nazi-built death camp in occupied Poland.
Among Millennials two-thirds (66%) did not know what Auschwitz is.
 
However, 93% of US citizens think schools should teach about the Holocaust and 80% said it is important to teach the subject matter to ensure it won’t happen again.
The study was done by Schoen Consulting and is based on 1,350 interviews; the margin of error is +/- 3%.

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