45% of Brits never heard of Auschwitz (no spam)

[fable]

I was shocked when I heard this on the BBC, so I did a little investigation on the Web. Sure enough, according to an article in the Scotsman:

NEARLY half of Britons have never heard of Auschwitz, according to a poll. The survey uncovered shocking levels of ignorance about the Holocaust, and among women and the under-35s the figure is as high as 60 per cent. But Jewish figures in Scotland yesterday questioned the results of the research and said more information than ever was available about the fate of Jews in Nazi death camps. Of the 4,000 adults surveyed, 45 per cent said they had never heard of Auschwitz.

The research was commissioned by the BBC in advance of Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January, which marks the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Sara Jacobs, co-director of the Glasgow Lubavitch Centre, a Jewish educational organisation, said: "I am very surprised to hear those figures. I would have thought the Holocaust was more likely than ever to appear on school curriculums...

To mark the Holocaust memorial date, BBC2 is screening a series, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution, described as the "definitive" account of what happened. Based on the testimony of nearly 100 survivors and perpetrators, it was three years in the making and will be part-dramatised using German and Polish actors.

Series producer Laurence Rees said: "The name Auschwitz is quite rightly a byword for horror. But the problem with thinking about horror is that we naturally turn away from it..." The £3 million, six-part series explores Auschwitz’s history as a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners. Auschwitz only became a Nazi death camp in 1944. Origins of the "Final Solution" will also be detailed, sourced from the original minutes of meetings held by the Nazi hierarchy.

Rees said he was astonished by the findings of the survey, particularly the level of ignorance among young people. "The findings are extraordinary," he said. "When I read them I simply couldn’t believe it. Auschwitz was the site of the biggest mass murder in the history of the world, yet to these people the word means nothing."


I'm not going to play oneupmanship on the British. But for all the pride taken in the educational system, the arts, the influx and presentation of information, and the sense of responsibility that is a traditional hallmark of English character--well, it's pretty astonishing. Your thoughts?

[ik911]

England is getting mass-americanized. That's my thought about it. All that matters is you, your job (to certain and limited extent) and some other unimportant things like what your neighbours think of what you do/wear/buy/sell/etc..

Ofcourse I'm wrong too. I'm generalizing both the English as the Americans. Actually it was too easy... Quite risky, polls like this. Just a minute ago I thought the English don't receive proper education.

Remember the monkeysphere?

[Sytze]

Well, your thread certainly is a coincidence, fable. I heard on the news today that Prince Harry was wearing an armband with a Nazi cross during a party (for info, check this link). Apparently it caused a lot of fuss in Great-Brittan and especially the tabloids took advantages of it, portraying titles as "Nazi Harry", "Harry the Nazi" etc. The poor boy is desperately trying to apologize to the English public right now, but so far he isn't doing very well.

[dragon wench]

I'm appalled but not surprised...
I was similarly shocked, whereupon I discovered that the majority of students in the first year uni history tutorial I was facillitating had never heard of the Spanish Civil War. The one quote by George Santayana comes to mind,
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Sytze,
I wasn't terribly surprised about Prince Harry either.... But my thoughts on that would likely constitute a separate thread.


Maybe more later.. I'm not fully awake yet.

[Moonbiter]

Auschwitz has become an everyday word here. "I woke up feeling like Auschwitz" is a common term for decribing a bad hangover. However, when asked what the word meant to them, a whopping 61% of Norwegian people between 16 and 25 years of age (10 000 surveyed) replied that "It had something to do with the Nazis" but couldn't tell what it was. A couple of years ago there was a big stir in the US because some rather vocal republicans put forth the notion of dropping high school education on the subjects of the Indian Wars, and especially the massacres at Rosebud and Wounded Knee because "they were of no importance in the education of young people in the new century." I have a sneaking suspicion that if you gave any 17 year old US kid the words "Wounded Knee" and asked him/her what it meant to them, the results would be something about football.
There is a surge of "history falsification" for lack of a better term, going on all over the western world at the moment. The reasons are many, but I feel that the need to cram as much "important" information as possible into the heads of young people is the main problem. The stuff young(er) people have to absorb in high school today leaves me completely beyond the pale, and I left that mess in -86 with far above average grades. It all comes down to what's important at the moment, and to the modern world it's more important to learn computer languages than real languages, economic history is more important than social history, and so on. This last autumn I substituted as a high school teacher for my sister-in-law in Norse mythology, because she's a closet hippy and wanted to eloborate on stuff that was completely beyond her 8 year teacher's education on the subject. The result was both frightening and enjoyable, but to make a long story short, the kids suddenly got an understanding of what the Vikings were all about that was completely left out of their impossibly static books. Same with WW2 and the rise and fall of the 3rd Reich. Hitler (they all think he was born German) was a military dictator who started a world war and got beaten by the Americans. He didn't like jews, and tried to kill them. It ended in 1945, with an atomic bomb. Period.
Of course, the fact that books have been replaced by Medal Of Honour on the screen doesn't exactly improve matters. Here's a good idea for an educational computer game: "Alone In the Dark-The Ghosts Of Auschwitz."

[Xandax]

I am affraid that we will start to see such a result form many nations now, the more distant WW2 becomes. Recent crisis and wars will take precedence in the "minds" over more distant ones.

In my view WW2's atrocities are one of the things that needs to be remember far more then many other things for many many years to come, because it is truely a reminder of what can happen if people shut their eyes to knowlegde and logic, and accepts ignorance and fear in their place.

[Sytze]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xandax I am affraid that we will start to see such a result form many nations now, the more distant WW2 becomes. Recent crisis and wars will take precedence in the "minds" over more distant ones.

That, in turn, raises the question whether the fading of knowledge of history is an improvement or not. Old sentiments and grudges can be forgotten and replaced by cooperation or mutual interests. Focusing on the future instead of living in the present can do wonders. On the other hand, history remains an important aspect of every day life and if we don't learn from history, what then?

[giles337]

Quote:

In my view WW2's atrocities are one of the things that needs to be remember far more then many other things for many many years to come, because it is truely a reminder of what can happen if people shut their eyes to knowlegde and logic, and accepts ignorance and fear in their place.

We have a living reminder right this minute going on in the middle east. I do not mean to say that WWII was unimportant, or should not be remembered, but personally I find it alot more worryign about the ignorance of what is happening in Israel/Palestine, not to mention Iraq these days.

[Xandax]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sytze That, in turn, raises the question whether the fading of knowledge of history is an improvement or not. Old sentiments and grudges can be forgotten and replaced by cooperation or mutual interests. Focusing on the future instead of living in the present can do wonders. On the other hand, history remains an important aspect of every day life and if we don't learn from history, what then?

Well - if fading history is the price we have to pay, then I'd rather that some hold on to the grudges. I think logic and reason is abanded if nations hold grudges after countless years. I seriously doubt many Germans have forgotten about World War 2, and yet - they still coorperate and have good relations with many other nations. The people and nations that still cling to old transgression are in my view ruled purly by emotion and irrational fear. Such as the Isreal/Palenstine conflict as well - where the only recourse as I see it is - not to forget the past or the history - but to move on. Of course neither side are willing to budge much though, and both expect the other to make the first move.

Quote:

Originally Posted by giles337 We have a living reminder right this minute going on in the middle east. I do not mean to say that WWII was unimportant, or should not be remembered, but personally I find it alot more worryign about the ignorance of what is happening in Israel/Palestine, not to mention Iraq these days.

I think that WW2 illustrates the point much better then any conflict since.
Alone due to the fact of the sheer number of peopel affected by the conflict and the masses of people closing their eyes to what takes place besides them.
While tragic and pointless - the conflicts of Isreal and Palenstine are much more localized. The nature of the conflict is also much different in that it is basically smaller fractions and not the nations per se, making war on each other - for instance via terroristic actions. Eventhough it is the Israeli government for one part - then there are still voices of opinion being spoken against the actions inside the nation. That was to my knowlegde not that much the case in neither Germany, Italy nor Russia and I doubt so in Japan as well. Critics of the regimes where systematically wiped out and not much uproar was created by it so it seems.
Iraq is a totally different conflict alltogether.
And while these conflicts are spawned by fear and ignorance, the scale of them alone makes them pale in comparision with WW2. The only way I can see that they are more important is because they are happening in our time. In 50 years (if the conflicts are over) - I hope WW2 is remembered more then Iraq.

[ik911]

Don't forget, history is as simple as it is complex. You can't teach all, nor can you learn all of it. (Or you should dedicate your life to it.)

I don't think any of you know even half of what Auschwitz was like. Me neither. You can't teach that at school.

But Auschwitz was just one of the concentration camps. There were way more, but we know Auschwitz because most Western-European jews and prisoners went there. Originally it was only concentration (a prison), but during Operation Reinhard it was adapted for extermination. Three other camps were constructed in the Operation: Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. (link)
How many people know about Belzec? Or Majdanek?

But there was more: all concentration and transfer camps
During transport and in all the other camps, many innocent individuals died.
And the ones that refused to give themselves in, are shot.
2.5 Million died in Auschwitz, but 12 Million were killed in total.

Isn't it strange that you're only supposed to know Auschwitz??

[fable]

Thing is, Auschwitz is/was the best known. It became synonymous with the whole range of ideas that included Nazi concentration camps, "The Final Solution," genocide, etc. I agree, the poll made the assumption that those who didn't know what Auschwitz was also knew very little about recent history, but I think that's a safe assumption. It's not like the sampling was asked who was the ArchDuke Ferdinand, or what the Battle of Salamis was about.

[GFreeman]

The Final Solution (also an interesting movie) is one of the lowest points in human history. Its embarrassing, disgusting and flat out ignorant. For "Prince Harry" to have done what he did completely floors me as well. What an arse!

[Tower_Master]

At first, I didn't know what to say to this. That we have fallen so lax in our remembrance of such a monumentally wrong historical event...

The essay There Is No News from Auschwitz says everything I have to say. It may be a cliched line, but we HAVE to remember history, becuase some things should NEVER be allowed to happen, especially not for a second time.

[frogus23]

I don't know if this conclusion necessarily suggests complete ignorance - Auschwitz was not a very large part of the Nazi death camp system, relatively speaking, and I do not think that remembering the names of individual camps is at all necessary to have a right awareness of the holocaust...

That said, I also thought that Auschwitz was a synonym for 'Nazi extermination camp', and that it was a popular symbol for the whole holocaust. I hope I was wrong.

[jopperm2]

I'm not completely sold that the lack of knowledge about Auschwitz says the British know nothing about the Holocaust. I would like to see other questions that are better worded before making any such decision. Many people may not know the name of some place in Poland, but are quite aware of the Holocaust.