With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Auschwitz is a beer, schoolchildren tell researchers

Around 1.3 million people perished in the Nazi death camp during the Second World War, but a survey of more than 1,000 secondary school pupils aged 11-16 revealed that a quarter still did not know its purpose.

Of those, about 10 per cent were not sure what it was, 8 per cent thought it was a country bordering Germany, 2 per cent thought it was a beer, the same proportion said it was a religious festival and a further 1 per cent said it was a type of bread.

Miramax and the London Jewish Cultural Centre, which commissioned the survey to mark the DVD release of The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, said that, as there are around 4.5 million 11 to 16-year-olds in the UK, this is the equivalent of 90,000 youngsters wrongly identifying Auschwitz as a drink and 45,000 mistaking it for bread.

The poll found that six in 10 youngsters did not know what the Final Solution was, with a fifth claiming it was the name of peace talks held to end the war.

Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)