Israel Matzav

British kids think Auschwitz is a beer

London's Daily Telegraph reports on Monday that a quarter of 11-16-year olds in Britain cannot correctly identify Auschwitz as a Nazi death camp at which Jews were exterminated.

Around 1.3 million people perished in the Nazi death camp during the Second World War, but a survey of more than 1,000 secondary school pupils aged 11-16 revealed that a quarter still did not know its purpose.

Of those, about 10 per cent were not sure what it was, 8 per cent thought it was a country bordering Germany, 2 per cent thought it was a beer, the same proportion said it was a religious festival and a further 1 per cent said it was a type of bread.

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The poll found that six in 10 youngsters did not know what the Final Solution was, with a fifth claiming it was the name of peace talks held to end the war.

And it revealed that, despite the Holocaust being specified on the secondary National Curriculum as a subject that pupils must be taught, only just over a third (37 per cent) knew that the Holocaust claimed the lives of six million Jews, with many drastically under-estimating the death toll.

In the Telegraph's opinion pages, George Pitcher argues that the Holocaust needs to become history.

I quite understand the motives of the "Never Forget" lobby. But the brutal truth is that as first-hand witnesses to the Holocaust disappear and as we move deeper into the 21st century, the Nazis' nearly successful attempt to exterminate European Jewry some 70 years ago is moving into the history books. That is understandable. But what is really shocking is how badly taught modern history is in our schools.

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what I am saying is that we need to ensure that one of the most totemic events of the darkest history of the 20th century needs to be properly taught in schools. It is already on the National Curriculum as a subject that must be taught, but clearly not yet taught well enough. I might add that we are now moving into a generation where we can be less protective about the subject matter. Holocaust denial, its motives and its proponents, also need to be taught, not only because of the warnings from history that they offer, but also because our children's children are understandably going to demand that no part of our common history can be ring-fenced from scrutiny. The best way to knock down Holocaust denial is to study it and our children need to make their own minds up as to why the views of Holocaust deniers such as Bishop Richard Willamson don't stand up.

Perhaps Holocaust teaching would be more effective if it were not cheapened by referring to every Israeli action in Gaza as a 'holocaust,' and if England were more aggressive in its response to anti-Semitism and less politically correct toward Muslims.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:00 PM