Memory of the Holocaust: A Seven-Nation Study

By Tom W. Smith

First of three parts: Basic findings

The Holocaust is such an absolute testament against bigotry and prejudice in general and anti-Semitism in particular that proponents of ethnic and religious hatred try to refute its lessons through the big lie of Holocaust denial. Their audacious distortions and fabrications have convinced few, but the testimony of the Holocaust may be facing a greater challenge from the combination of the passage of time and the waning collective memory about the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews. To gauge the state of anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli attitudes in the contemporary world and how those attitudes are related to people’s knowledge about the Holocaust, the American Jewish Committee commissioned a Memory of the Holocaust Study in seven nations—Austria, France, Germany, Poland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Knowledge of the Holocaust is limited and uneven across these nations. One measure of such knowledge asked respondents, “From what you know or have heard, what were Auschwitz, Dachau, and Treblinka?” As Figure 1A shows, ability to identify these places as concentration camps or some related facility (such as death camps, extermination camps, or camps) ranged from 91 percent in Sweden to just 44 percent in the United States. Don’t know levels ran from 46 percent in the United States to 5 percent in Sweden.

A second question asking, “Approximately how many Jews in all of Europe were killed by the Nazis during the Second World War?” produced correct responses ranging from 55 percent in Sweden to 33 percent in the United States.

Two knowledge scales were made from these knowledge items. The first, shown in Figure 2A, counted the number of don’t know responses. Lack of knowledge was greatest in the United States, with 15 percent not knowing either fact, 39 percent giving only one answer, and 47 percent answering both items. Knowledge was greatest in Austria, France, and Sweden, with 83 to 85 percent giving answers to both questions.

The second scale combined don’t know responses with incorrect responses to the question on the number of Jews killed (Figure 2B; other responses to the concentration camps question unfortunately appear to combine both correct descriptions of the three camps along with errant responses, so incorrect responses could not be identified). Giving a don’t know or incorrect response for both items ranged from a low of 3 percent in Sweden to 38 percent in the United States. No don’t know responses or incorrect responses to both items went from 54 percent in Sweden to 25 percent in the United States.

One might expect that knowledge of the Holocaust would be greater in countries that were most directly involved, since people presumably learn more about their own history than others do. According to this assumption, knowledge would be highest in Germany as the perpetrator of the Holocaust, followed by Austria as part of the German Reich during World War II, then in Poland as an occupied nation, homeland of many victims, and the site of major concentration camps. Next would come France as another occupied nation and harvesting ground for victims, and then perhaps Sweden as a neutral country close to Germany and its occupied territories, and a refuge for Jews and others fleeing the Nazis. Last would come the United Kingdom as a European, allied power, and, finally, the United States as a non-European, allied power.

In fact, however, knowledge deviates notably from this model. Knowledge was greatest in Sweden, followed by France, Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom, Poland, and the United States. Thus, knowledge in Sweden was greater than expected, and the Germans and, especially, the Polish were less informed than their historical proximity would predict.