Over 60% Of US Young People Unaware Of 6Mln Jews Being Murdered During Holocaust - Survey

More than 60 percent of the US millennial and Generation Z populations are ignorant of six million Jews being killed during the Holocaust, with almost 50 percent being unable to name a single concentration camp or ghetto, according to the US Millennial Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Survey, released on Wednesday by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference)

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 16th September, 2020) More than 60 percent of the US millennial and Generation Z populations are ignorant of six million Jews being killed during the Holocaust, with almost 50 percent being unable to name a single concentration camp or ghetto, according to the US Millennial Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Survey, released on Wednesday by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference).

"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 Claims Conference said in a statement.

According to the organization, among the survey's most disturbing findings is that 11 percent of respondents, including almost 20 percent in the state of New York, think that Jews caused the Holocaust.

"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," Claims Conference President Gideon Taylor said.

The Holocaust refers to the period from 1933, when Adolf Hitler assumed the position of German chancellor, to 1945, the year the Second World War ended. It involved the mass persecution and murder of German and European Jewry, culminating in the ethnic cleansing program, dubbed as the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question," which involved Jews being relocated to ghettos, and concentration and extermination camps where they were either murdered or died from malnutrition, disease, hunger and inhumane treatment. Six million Jews died over the course of that tragic period.