Only 45% gave the correct answer.
By Harriet Sherwood
The Guardian (1/22/20)
Fewer than half of American adults know how many Jews were killed in the Holocaust, according to a survey published ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27.
Forty-five per cent of those asked by the Pew Research Center about the number of Jews killed by the Nazis gave the correct answer of approximately 6 million.
The Anti-Defamation League annual audit of antisemitic incidents in the US for 2018 recorded the third-highest total since the civil rights group began publishing data 40 years ago.
From multiple choice answers, 12% selected about 3 million, and 2% selected less than 1 million. Another 12% said more than 12 million Jews died in the Holocaust. One in three people (29%) said they were not sure or did not answer.
According to the survey of almost 11,000 Americans, 69% said the Holocaust happened between 1930 and 1950. One in 10 people thought it took place between 1910 and 1930, and 2% answered between 1890 and 1910. One in 100 people thought it was later than second world war, answering 1950-1970; and 18% did not know or gave no answer.
Some people believe ignorance about the Holocaust is linked to a rise in antisemitism. There are also concerns that, as living witnesses to Nazi atrocities and the death camps dwindle in number, the Holocaust is receding in the collective memory. …
(Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2020. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )
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75 Years After Auschwitz Liberation, Holocaust Survivors Alarmed By Rise Of Anti-Semitism
Seventy-five years after Jack Lewin was liberated from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, the specter of anti-Semitism is rising once again.
Recent violent attacks on Jewish Americans ― in Pittsburgh, Poway, Jersey City ― have left the 93-year-old Holocaust survivor shocked and angry.
“I didn’t believe that in my lifetime, we would have a repetition of what happened almost 80 years ago,” Lewin told HuffPost.
Hundreds of Holocaust survivors from around the world are traveling to Auschwitz-Birkenau to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the death camp’s liberation on Monday, a date the United Nations has set apart as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Over 45 world leaders gathered at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial on Thursday to denounce the modern-day rise of anti-Semitism. Additional ceremonies are expected to take place on Monday at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The Nazis used forced labor to turn an abandoned military base near the town of Oświęcim, in German-occupied Poland, into a sprawling prison complex and killing center. Families from across Europe were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in cramped cattle trains. Some were selected as forced labor, while others deemed too weak to work ― older people, women, children, the sick ― were killed in gas chambers.
Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet army on Jan. 27, 1945. Between 1940 and 1945, more than 1.1 million people were murdered there, most of whom were Jews. …