Disturbing Findings Reveal Significant Number Of Millennials and Gen Z Can’t Name A Single Concentration Camp Or Ghetto, Believe That Two Million Or Fewer Jews Were Killed And A Concerning Percentage Believe That Jews Caused The Holocaust
The Hall of Names at Yad Vashem is a memorial to each and every one of the six million Jew who perished in the Holocaust
NEW YORK, NEW YORK: September 16, 2020 – Gideon Taylor, President of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), today announced the release of the U.S. Millennial Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Survey, the first-ever 50-state survey on Holocaust knowledge among Millennials and Gen Z. The surprising state-by-state results highlight a worrying lack of basic Holocaust knowledge, a growing problem as fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors – eyewitnesses to a state-sponsored genocide – are alive to share the lessons of the Holocaust.
Nationally, there is a clear lack of awareness of key historical facts; 63 percent of all national survey respondents do not know that six million Jews were murdered and 36 percent thought that “two million or fewer Jews” were killed during the Holocaust. Additionally, although there were more than 40,000 camps and ghettos in Europe during the Holocaust, 48 percent of national survey respondents cannot name a single one.
The state-by-state analysis yielded a particularly disquieting finding that nearly 20 percent of Millennials and Gen Z in New York feel the Jews caused the Holocaust.
“The results are both shocking and saddening and they underscore why we must act now while Holocaust survivors are still with us to voice their stories,” said Gideon Taylor. “We need to understand why we aren’t doing better in educating a younger generation about the Holocaust and the lessons of the past. This needs to serve as a wake-up call to us all, and as a road map of where government officials need to act.”
“The results are both shocking and saddening and they underscore why we must act now while Holocaust survivors are still with us to voice their stories,” said Gideon Taylor. “We need to understand why we aren’t doing better in educating a younger generation about the Holocaust and the lessons of the past. This needs to serve as a wake-up call to us all, and as a road map of where government officials need to act.”
The study reveals that Wisconsin scores highest in Holocaust awareness among U.S. Millennials and Gen Z. Arkansas has the lowest Holocaust knowledge score1, with less than 2-in-10 (17 percent) of Millennials and Gen Z meeting the Holocaust knowledge criteria.
We calculated our Holocaust “knowledge score” by using the percentage of Millennials and Gen Z adults who met all three of the following criteria: 1) have “Definitively heard about the Holocaust,” AND 2) can name at least one concentration camp, death camp, or ghetto, AND 3) know that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
In what might be considered a disturbing sign of the times, 59 percent of respondents indicate that they believe something like the Holocaust could happen again.
The states with the highest Holocaust Knowledge Scores are: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maine, Kansas, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Idaho, Iowa, and Montana.
The states with the lowest Holocaust Knowledge Scores are: Alaska, Delaware, Maryland, New York, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi, and Arkansas.
1We calculated our Holocaust “knowledge score” by using the percentage of Millennials and Gen Z adults who met all three of the following criteria: 1) have “Definitively heard about the Holocaust,” AND 2) can name at least one concentration camp, death camp, or ghetto, AND 3) know that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
Major Survey Findings
Camps and Ghettos
- Nationally, 48 percent of U.S. Millennial and Gen Z could not name a single one of the more than 40,000 concentration camps or ghettos established during World War II. This number is reflected in individual state outcomes, with an astounding 60 percent of respondents in Texas, 58 percent in New York, and 57 percent in South Carolina, unable to name a single camp or ghetto.
- 56 percent of U.S. Millennial and Gen Z were unable to identify Auschwitz-Birkenau, and there was virtually no awareness of concentration camps and ghettos overall. Only six percent of respondents are familiar with the infamous Dachau camp, while awareness of Bergen-Belsen (three percent), Buchenwald (one percent) and Treblinka (one percent) is virtually nonexistent.
Number of Jews Murdered
- When asked how many Jews were killed during the Holocaust, 63 percent of Millennials and Gen Z did not know six million Jews were murdered. The states with the lowest scores for this question are Arkansas with 69 percent, followed by Delaware with 68 percent, Arizona with 67 percent, Mississippi and Tennessee with 66 percent, and Hawaii, Iowa, Vermont, and West Virginia with 65 percent.
- When broken down further, 36 percent of Millennials and Gen Z thought that two million or fewer Jews were murdered. Arkansas ranks as the state with the lowest awareness of this widely known data point, with 37 percent believing two million or fewer were murdered, followed by 36 percent in Georgia, Indiana and Ohio; 35 percent in Minnesota; and 34 percent in Arizona, Iowa, Kentucky and New Hampshire.
Responsibility for the Holocaust
- In perhaps one of the most disturbing revelations of this survey, 11 percent of U.S. Millennial and Gen Z respondents believe Jews caused the Holocaust.
- The findings were more disturbing in New York where an astounding 19 percent of respondents felt Jews caused the Holocaust; followed by 16 percent in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Montana and 15 percent in Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Nevada and New Mexico.
Holocaust Denial
- Also troubling is the percentage of Millennials and Gen Z that have witnessed Holocaust denial or distortion on social media. Approximately half (49 percent) of U.S. Millennials and Gen Z have seen Holocaust denial or distortion posts on social media or elsewhere online.
- 30 percent of respondents across all 50 states indicated that they had seen Nazi symbols on their social media platforms or in their community. The state with the highest response was Nevada with 70 percent. Other states with high scores include: New York with 67 percent;
- Arizona and Texas with 64 percent; and Colorado, South Dakota and Washington with 63 percent.
Holocaust Education
- A consistent bright spot across all the survey findings is the desire for Holocaust education. 64 percent of all U.S. Millennials and Gen Z believe that Holocaust education should be compulsory in school.
- 80 percent of all respondents believe that it is important to continue teaching about the Holocaust, in part, so that it does not happen again.
“We came to realize that, although a number of states already mandate Holocaust education which is an excellent first step,” said Claims Conference Holocaust task force leader Matthew Bronfman. “For the mandates to have a significant effect in classrooms there must be state funding to support the mandates. The Holocaust is a broad topic. Specialized teacher training and thoughtfully developed curriculum are needed for students to benefit.”
Claims Conference Executive Vice President Greg Schneider said of the survey, “Not only was their overall lack of Holocaust knowledge troubling, but combined with the number of Millennials and Gen Z who have seen Holocaust denial on social media, it is clear that we must fight this distortion of history and do all we can to ensure that the social media giants stop allowing this harmful content on their platforms. Survivors lost their families, friends, homes and communities; we cannot deny their history.” The Claims Conference recently launched #NoDenyingIt, a digital campaign in which survivors, in personal and moving videos appeal directly to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg – imploring him to remove Holocaust denial from his platform. The survey findings underscore the importance the urgent need to understand the Holocaust denial is hate speech and to remove denial of this critical historic event.
Survey Taskforce<
A U.S. Millennial Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Survey task force led by Claims Conference Board member Matthew Bronfman, was comprised of Holocaust survivors as well as historians and subject matter experts from museums, educational institutions and leading nonprofits in the field of Holocaust education, including Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Claims Conference and George Washington University.
Survey Methodology and Sample
The Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Study was commissioned by the Claims Conference. Data was collected in the United States and analyzed by Schoen Cooperman Research, with a representative sample of 1,000 interviews nationwide and 200 interviews in each state with adults ages 18 to 39 via landline, cell phone and online interviews. Respondents were selected at random and constituted a demographically representative sample of the Millennial population across each state.
For more information, please visit: www.claimscon.org
“Middle school teacher who showed photo of ‘cute’ baby Hitler under investigation in Connecticut”
BY ANDREW LAPIN MAY 15, 2024 2:51 PM
“A middle school teacher in Connecticut was reportedly suspended following a lesson on the Holocaust in which they asked students to draw a swastika in their notebooks, list positive things Adolf Hitler did for Germany and comment on a baby photo of the Nazi leader that the teacher described as “cute.”
And this week, a private middle school outside Atlanta faced criticism after asking students to rate Hitler “as a Solution Seeker” and “as an Ethical Decision Maker.”
The incidents are the latest in a string of grade-school lessons on the Holocaust that have invited students to evince sympathy for the Nazis, and come as the Israel-Hamas war has prompted concerns of rising antisemitism at K-12 schools nationwide.
The teacher at the public Middlesex Middle School in Darien, Connecticut, identified only as a “veteran” social studies teacher, did not make any comments supporting Hitler or Nazism during the lesson last week, beyond the content of the assignment. But students in the class still felt uncomfortable as a result of the lesson, according to local reports.
Maintaining a safe school environment free from antisemitism and other forms of hate is our top priority in the Darien Public Schools,” superintendent Alan Addley wrote in an email to parents last week, reprinted by local news sites.
Addley did not share anything further about what he described as the “middle school lesson on the Holocaust,” details of which originally came from anonymous sources quoted in the Connecticut Examiner. He did say that “the allegations are serious” and that the district would be investigating.
Requests for comment to the heads of the local Jewish federation and Jewish Community Relations Council of Stamford, New Canaan and Darien, in Connecticut, were not immediately returned. Addley also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the same region, a swastika was recently found carved into a Darien train station bathroom stall and multiple swastikas were found painted in a Stamford, Connecticut high school.
“I wish to affirm the commitment of the board and the superintendent to assuring that our students and staff can learn and teach in a school environment in which they may feel safe, secure and free from antisemitism and any other forms of hate,” Jill McCammon, chair of Darien’s board of education, told the Darien Times in a statement.
Diane Sloyer, CEO of the federation, told the Darien Times that parents were “shocked” by the allegations.
“If this teacher did, in fact, do what has been said, I think anybody who understands history would find it appalling and call for (their) immediate dismissal from the school system,” Sloyer told the paper. “So we’re watching closely, and I am confident that Darien schools will do the right thing.”
Meanwhile at the Mount Vernon School, a private school in Sandy Springs, Georgia, eighth-graders were given an assignment in which they were asked to rank Hitler’s qualities both “as a Solution Seeker” and “as an Ethical Decision Maker,” according to screenshots of the assignment shared by a local news reporter this week.
In both categories, students were asked to rate the claims on a scale that included “lacks evidence,” “approaching expectations,” “meets expectations” or “exceeds expectations,” with a space below the multiple-choice options to explain their answer.
The assignment instructed students to use “the Mount Vernon Mindset Rubric.” According to a 2015 description of the rubric provided by the National Association of Independent Schools, the rubric defines the “Solution Seeker” category as “Formulates meaningful questions; Inquires, evaluates, synthesizes, and discerns cross disciplinary knowledge and perspectives; sets goals, develops a plan of action, and tests solutions.”
The “Ethical Decision Maker” category is defined as “Exhibits integrity, honesty, empathy, fairness, and respect; demonstrates personal, social, and civic responsibility; develops understanding of emerging ethical issues regarding new technologies.”
In a statement, the Atlanta-based Southeast chapter of the Anti-Defamation League commended the school for removing what it called “this misguided lesson.”
“Any assignment that requires considering Hitler or Nazism as a reasonable response, sound leadership, or a clear vision is not just problematic, but inherently dangerous,” ADL Southeast said on social media. “This kind of ‘gotcha’ curriculum asks students to consider genocidal antisemitism as a reasonable goal or outcome for a world leader, without weighing any moral implications. It’s risky & irresponsible pedagogy.”
A request for comment to the Mount Vernon Middle School was not immediately returned. A local TV station reported that some parents expressed “outrage” and believed the assignment was antisemitic. School officials have removed the assignment from the curriculum and said in a statement that they “wholeheartedly denounce” antisemitism, the station reported.
“We do not condone positive labels for Adolf Hitler,” reads the Tuesday statement from Kristy Lundstrom, the head of school. The statement also claims the screenshot was “taken out of context” from a March assignment.
“The intent of the assignment was an exploration of World War II designed to boost student knowledge of factual events and understand the manipulation of fear leveraged by Adolf Hitler in connection to the Treaty of Versailles,” Lundstrom wrote.
Lundstrom added that she met with the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion officer as well as “a concerned rabbi” after learning of the assignment, and alluded to the Israel-Hamas war.
“In this very heavy time, when our Jewish students and families have the added stress of world events, we want to be clear that The Mount Vernon School wholeheartedly denounces antisemitism,” her statement continued.
Some K-12 books on the Holocaust have been the subject of recent culture wars, and of late, some Jews in public education have said they face an especially tense atmosphere. Incidents of antisemitism in schools have reportedly been on the rise since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, including in middle schools: A middle school in Berkeley, California, recently staged a walkout in support of Palestinians that local Jews said left them feeling targeted.
But Holocaust lessons celebrating Hitler and the Nazis were a regular occurrence even before the current war. In 2013, students at a high school in New York were told to “argue that Jews are evil, and use solid rationale from government propaganda to convince me of your loyalty to the Third Reich!” In 2021, an elementary school in New Jersey faced backlash for an assignment in which a student wrote a positive biography of Hitler and dressed up as him. Later that same year, teachers in Texas were instructed to present “opposing” views on the Holocaust as part of a policy to teach multiple perspectives on “widely debated and currently controversial” topics.
Antisemitism in public schools was also the topic of a recent congressional hearing that featured three district leaders from across the country. At that hearing, Holocaust education was briefly discussed as a possible antidote to antisemitism. Both Connecticut and Georgia, like many states, have Holocaust education mandates but leave specific lesson plans up to individual districts.”
https://www.jta.org/2024/05/15/united-states/middle-school-teacher-who-showed-photo-of-cute-baby-hitler-under-investigation-in-connecticut