Nearly Half of Britons Unaware of Auschwitz.

I happened to run across this article mentioning:

Nearly half of Britons in a poll said they had never heard of Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in southern Poland that became a symbol of the Holocaust and the attempted genocide of the Jews.

The poll was done by the BBC.

The BBC said the research was based on a nationally representative postal survey of 4,000 adults 16 and older.

Findings indicacted that:

The survey found that 45 percent of those surveyed had not heard of Auschwitz. Historians estimate that anywhere from one million to three million people, about 90 percent of them Jews, were killed there.

Among women and people younger than 35, 60 percent had never heard of Auschwitz, despite the recent popularity of films such as "Schindler's List," "Life is Beautiful" and "The Pianist," which depict the atrocities of the Holocaust.

Nearly Half of Britons Unaware of Auschwitz -Poll

I found this to be interesting and quite astounding.
Any comments or thoughts on this would be welcome.



seekerof

Yeah, but I bet that they all have heard of Dunkirk.

How many Americans have?

Wow, i find that pretty disturbing. How are we to prevent genocide when so many people are un aware of it? Is it no longer taught in schools? if not then it should be. Didn't someone once say that if we ignore the lessons of history we are doomed to repeat it?

While I'd love to say otherwise, I suspect that this is so in most countries.

The thing is, I don't know how important it is that people know the names of every deathcamp, so long as they know what happened, and realise it's wrong.

Still though, I thought Americans were the only uneducated ones

Is that title justified really? I am not sure that 4000 people can possibly represent the whole of Britain. We have a population of 60,000,000. I do not consider that an extensive survey in all honesty.

However, not knowing the names of places where atrocities took place really isn't that big a deal. Knowing that they did take place, who commited them in general and what the motives were is important and is also common knowledge.

If the question was: What were the Nazi's goals and what did they want to achieve?

I think you would see very informed answers from alot of people that would not like to see a repeat performance from any country's political party.

that's indeed strange. thaught they had a better knowledge of what was going on in these dark times, i mean as you already said, auschwitz is like a symbol of the human tragedy and should be well known. in germany you have WW2 almost every schoolyear in history lessons (at least in my school)..over and over, and of course its right, we have to prevent that something like this happens again.

in the 10th class, on our visit to england, we were friendly greeted with a "heil hitler" as soon as the younger ones figured out we were germans, really a sad experience because we were all between 16-18 years old and had obviosly not much to do with WW2...but that's life if your born in germany, you always carry this with you.

Originally posted by American Mad Man
While I'd love to say otherwise, I suspect that this is so in most countries.

The thing is, I don't know how important it is that people know the names of every deathcamp, so long as they know what happened, and realise it's wrong.

Exactley what I was trying to say

Originally posted by Hannah
that's indeed strange. thaught they had a better knowledge of what was going on in these dark times, i mean as you already said, auschwitz is like a symbol of the human tragedy and should be well known. in germany you have WW2 almost every schoolyear in history lessons (at least in my school)..over and over, and of course its right, we have to prevent that something like this happens again.

in the 10th class, on our visit to england, we were friendly greeted with a "heil hitler" as soon as the younger ones figured out we were germans, really a sad experience because we were all between 16-18 years old and had obviosly not much to do with WW2...but that's life if your born in germany, you always carry this with you.

I'm sorry you were treated like that Hannah, there is no excuse for that kind of ignorance. I spent some happy times in Germany when i was in the Army and the people are some of the kindest Ive met.
You make good beer too


Edit:Spell check.

[edit on 2-12-2004 by Janus]

Originally posted by Janus
I'm sorry you were treated like that Hannah, there is no excuse for that kind of ignorance. I spent some happy times in Germany when i was in the Army and the people are some of the kindest Ive met.
You make good beer too

[edit on 2-12-2004 by Janus]

we spend some good days in england too, this was just the first experience as we left the bus and were looking for our hotel, not representative for all britains of course, ignorance is everywhere

and yes, i like german beer too

[edit on 2-12-2004 by Hannah]

Oh man! there are people that don't know where their country is on the map! or who their president is! knowing about Auschwitz is a luxury!

info:
Auschwitz:

for those who want to know more...

The BBC said the research was based on a nationally representative postal survey of 4,000 adults 16 and older.

Hmmm....4,000?? not alot if you think about it.
Auschwitz and the holocaust is a major part of History in the UK edcuation and everyone has to study it. To be honest, i dont know who they were asking...it was probably the people who never went to school

I've heard it takes two generations to make something forgotten, and I believe it's been two generations since WWII.

That's pretty sad. Just cover it up, don't mention it, so future generations won't know...and you can do it all over again. They say hindsight is 20/20 and people are just blind to that.

I hadn't heard of the Holocaust myself until 8th grade, and I wound up taking a Holocaust Literature class in high school. Then again, I grew up in the Detroit area, which has a considerable Jewish population, and two good friends of mine were Jewish.

Selected highlights from the link below:

�About 11% of young Americans couldn�t even locate the US on a world map..�

��.Despite the threat of war in Iraq and the daily reports of suicide bombers in Israel, less than 15 percent of the young U.S. citizens could locate either country.�

I�ll leave it up to you to decide how valuable these polls are.

news.nationalgeographic.com...

That is shocking to say the least... how are we going to stop this with America completely ignoring international law again, and again.. and peoples memory being out performed by a goldfish with amnesia?

Not knowing about Auschwitz and not knowing about the Holocaust are two entirely separate things. Many people would not have heard of Buchenwald or Dachau either.

I'm suprised at the ignorance displayed of geography but I doubt very much that the average Briton is unaware that millions of Jews were exterminated in concentration camps during WW2.

The Holocaust still features heavily in British media and education, and you would have to be deaf and blind to be ignorant of past history.
And let's not forget, Schindler's List was released here too.

Originally posted by Clandestine
Despite the threat of war in Iraq and the daily reports of suicide bombers in Israel, less than 15 percent of the young U.S. citizens could locate either country

I suspected it was bad, but not that bad...

I'd like to know how many people heard about the Armenian genocide, the occupation of Tibet, the sistematic slaughter of the Indio tribes in Brazil, the Stalinian "purges" in the 30s (often addressed toward Jewish communities) or the ruthless persecution of Christians in Indonesia. The Jewish Holocaust was a disgusting atrocity, something that words alone cannot describe. But it seems to me that it is sometimes presented as an A-grade slaughter, while all the other genocides are B-grade slaughters. Perhaps the blood of a Jewish child is worth more than the blood of an Indio mother? Perhaps Auschwitz is more terrible than the Armenian "march of death" across Anatolia? No, they are all the same, they are all genocides. But sometimes it seems a different story...

Originally posted by Kakugo
I'd like to know how many people heard about the Armenian genocide, the occupation of Tibet, the sistematic slaughter of the Indio tribes in Brazil, the Stalinian "purges" in the 30s (often addressed toward Jewish communities)

Very true Stalin killed many more people then the "Holocaust" and yet the holocaust gets all the press not many people know the extent of the people that suffered under Stalin.

Less than 6 million Jews died in Holocaust. Stalin killed 20 million plus of his own people.

Originally posted by Kakugo
Perhaps Auschwitz is more terrible than the Armenian "march of death" across Anatolia? No, they are all the same, they are all genocides. But sometimes it seems a different story...

Winners write the history of the world and the average person thinks that is the truth and simply turns a blind eye toward everything else. I guess the winners of the world war 2 wanted to turn Hitler into a monster so that the war that killed too many people would be justified and they would be regarded as the saviors of the people, while in reality there weren't.

This happens everywhere, a sad fact of history.

Surf