CNN Poll In Europe Shows How Little People Know About The Holocaust
Image by Getty Images
(JTA) — In a poll conducted among 7,092 adults in seven European countries, 28 percent of respondents said that Jews are too influential, and a third said they have no substantial knowledge of the Holocaust.
The CNN poll, by ComRes, on anti-Semitism was performed in September in Britain, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Sweden and Austria, the network reported.
Overall, nearly 25 percent of all respondents said that Jews have too much influence in conflict and wars across the world.
One in five said they have too much influence in the media and the same number believe they have too much influence in politics. A third of respondents said that Jews use the Holocaust to advance their own positions or goals.
Forty percent of all respondents said that Jews were at risk of racist violence in their countries and half said their governments should do more to fight anti-Semitism. But substantial minorities blamed Israel or Jews themselves for anti-Semitism.
To 28 percent of respondents, anti-Semitism in their countries mostly owed to Israel’s actions, they said. And 18 percent said the phenomenon was a response to the everyday behavior of Jewish people.
Just over a third, or 34 percent, of all respondents said they knew just a little or nothing at all about the Holocaust.
Only five percent of respondents reported never hearing about the Holocaust. But a further 29 percent said they had heard about the genocide, and that this was the full extent of their knowledge about it.
Half of respondents said they know “a fair amount” about the Holocaust.
Yad Vashem, Israel’s state museum on the Holocaust, said in a statement Tuesday that it “is deeply concerned” about the data, primarily over how many Europeans claimed in it to know little or nothing about the genocide.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
