HOLOCAUST SURVEY RESULTS `SHOCKING'.

A new U.S. survey shows that adults under 40 years of age have a “worrying lack of basic Holocaust knowledge,” with more than 60 per cent failing to realize that six million Jews perished in the slaughter surrounding the Second World War.

The survey, commissioned by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, focused on millennials and Generation Z, NBC reports. It showed that as well as lacking basic genocide knowledge, more than one in 10 of those asked had never even heard the word “Holocaust.”

The Claims Conference non-profit, which is focused on Holocaust victim rights and compensation, called the results “shocking.”

The survey relied on 1,000 evenly divided interviews across 50 U.S. states, targeting those aged 18 to 39, at random but demographically representative. Interviews were done online and over the phone.

Overall 63 per cent were unaware of the Holocaust's full death tally, and more than half thought the figure had been under two million. Almost half could not even name a single war-era ghetto or concentration camp.

The Holocaust, led by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, had wiped out two-thirds of

European Jews, and millions from other targeted minorities, by the time the Second World War came to an end. Huge numbers were gassed at camps of horror, like Auschwitz.

Greg Schneider of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, told NBC: “The most important lesson is that we can't lose any more time. If we let these trends continue for another generation, the crucial lessons from this terrible part of history could be lost.”

Of equal concern amid the survey's results was the number of people who feel the Holocaust never actually happened. Only nine out of 10 respondents said they felt it actually happened, with seven per cent unsure and three per cent feeling it didn't happen.

Deborah Lipstadt, professor of modern Jewish history and Holocaust studies at Emory University, told NBC: “There is no doubt that Holocaust denial is a form of anti-Semitism. And when we fail to actively remember the facts of what happened, we risk a situation where prejudice and anti-Semitism will encroach on those facts.”

Among the problems, experts fear, are the readily viewable examples of Nazi symbolism, as well as Holocaust denial, online. Of those surveyed, 56 per cent said they had seen Nazi symbols either on social media feeds, or in their own communities, since 2015.

National Post staff