Ignorance about the Holocaust is growing

Ignorance about the Holocaust is growing, particularly among young people. In the United States, a 2018 survey showed that 66% of millennials could not identify what the Auschwitz concentration and death camp was. 

A recent CNN poll in Europe revealed that about a third of the 7,000 European respondents across seven countries knew "just a little or nothing at all" about the Holocaust. In France, nearly 20% of young adults between the ages of 18 and 34 said they had never heard of the Holocaust.

These studies paint a disquieting picture of widening gaps in the knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust with the passing years. The concern isn't only that the Holocaust is fading from memory, it's that the lessons that can be applied to the ongoing human rights abuses and threats to democracy are also being lost. Today, January 27, is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and there is no better time to call for a renewed effort to educate young people about the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews.