Quarter of Dutch young people think the Holocaust was a myth

‘These findings are very serious and downright shocking. We have a lot of work to do. And fast, too’

ALMOST a quarter of young people in the Netherlands believe the Holocaust was a “myth” or exaggerated, according to a survey.

Some 12 per cent of all Dutch respondents believe the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust has been inflated or that the whole thing is a complete fabrication.

That figure rose to 23 per cent in the under-40s surveyed by New Yorkbased Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

The findings have prompted calls for better education in the country that was home to Anne Frank.

Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, told ANP news agency: “I find it shocking. We can debate everything, but it’s important that we all agree on the facts.”

Three years ago, Mr Rutte apologised for the failure of Dutch officials during the Second World War to do more to prevent the deportation and murder of Jews. In 2021, he opened a Holocaust monument in Amsterdam.

Dilan Yeşilgöz-zegerius, the Dutch minister of justice and security, said the findings are “downright shocking” and “very serious”, adding: “Almost a quarter of the Dutch people born after 1980 think that the Holocaust is a ‘myth’ or that it is heavily ‘exaggerated’.

“As a society, we have a lot of work to do. And fast, too.”

Of the 140,000 Jews living in the Netherlands before the Holocaust, 102,000 were killed.

However, 53 per cent of Dutch people do not regard the Netherlands as a country where the Holocaust took place, while 22 per cent were able to identify Westerbork, a transit camp in the eastern Netherlands where Jews, including Anne Frank, were sent.

The survey found that 60 per cent of respondents had not visited the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam. The canalside building is where Anne, her sister, parents and four other Jews hid from the Dutch capital’s Nazi occupiers from 1942 until August 1944, when they were discovered and deported.

In a statement, Gideon Taylor, the president of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, said: “Survey after survey, we continue to witness a decline in Holocaust knowledge and awareness. Equally disturbing is the trend towards Holocaust denial and distortion.

“To address this trend, we must put a greater focus on Holocaust education in our schools globally.

“If we do not, denial will soon outweigh knowledge, and future generations will have no exposure to the critical lessons of the Holocaust.”