Nearly eight decades since the Holocaust began in Europe, the subject is losing familiarity among people in Canada, according to new survey results.
New research shows that many people in the North American country don’t know what the Holocaust was, cannot name a concentration camp, and are unaware that millions of Jews died during World War II.
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According to results from a new survey, 54 percent of Canadians polled said they were unaware that an estimated 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust in World War II. The research was produced by the Azrieli Foundation, an organization that promotes Holocaust education, and the Claims Conference, a nonprofit organization that secures compensation for Holocaust survivors and their heirs.
The survey of 1,100 Canadians also showed that more than half of the 293 young adults (18- to 34-year-olds) polled in the study couldn’t name a concentration camp or ghetto during the Holocaust, and about 62 percent of young Canadians questioned did not know that 6 million Jews lost their lives during the Holocaust. Another 22 percent of Canadian young adults surveyed said they hadn’t heard or were not sure if they had heard of the Holocaust.
“This is something that we need to be alarmed about because, (just as) students are learning about the American Revolution of 1776, the British wars against the colonies, (this also is a) bedrock of general knowledge which is not something that we should be thinking about twice,” says Richelle Budd Caplan, director of the European department of the International School for Holocaust Studies of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
The research also showed that 23 percent of Canadians believe only about 2 million or fewer Jews were killed during the Holocaust, while another quarter polled said they didn’t know how many Jews died during the Holocaust. About 6 in 10 Canadians agreed with the statement that fewer people seem to care about the Holocaust today compared to the past.
The survey’s findings are published ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27.
The study also provided insight in how Canadians contrast themselves to Americans in hot-button race issues. According to the survey, Canadians are more likely to believe neo-Nazis are more prevalent in the United States than in their own country. Almost half of those polled, 47 percent said there were a “great deal” or “many” neo-Nazis in the U.S., compared to 17 percent who believed the same in Canada.
The answers to the survey provide important clues to educators abouth what they should teach, says Budd Caplan, adding that teachers also should provide lessons for other countries.
“In order to think about responsibility about the future, we need to consider our education, what we want to invest in — not only in the millennials but in today the future leaders of tomorrow,” she says. “If ignorance is widespread and people are so opinionated especially on social media (we need to ask ourselves what are they opinionated about. (Is it) what they don’t know?”
A similar study last year showed the same troubling gap among U.S. millennials. According to the study, 45 percent of Americans couldn’t name a concentration camp — there were more than 40,000 camps and ghettos in Europe — while 66 percent of the millennials surveyed didn’t know what Auschwitz was.
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Canadian Young Adults Know Little About the Holocaust, Survey Finds originally appeared on usnews.com
