Survey shows ‘disturbing’ lack of Holocaust awareness in the Netherlands

A Jewish group that commissioned a survey on Holocaust awareness in the Netherlands says that the results showed “a disturbing lack of awareness of key historical facts about the Holocaust,” prompting calls for better education in the nation that was home to diarist Anne Frank and her family.

The survey commissioned by the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany finds that the number of respondents who believe the Holocaust is a myth was higher than in any of the other five nations previously surveyed.

In the survey, 23% of adults under age 40 and 12% of all respondents indicate they believed the Holocaust was a myth or that the number of Jews killed has been greatly exaggerated.

“Not only is this downright shocking, it’s very serious,” Dutch Justice Minister Dilan Yesilgöz-Zegerius says on Twitter. “Almost a quarter of the Dutch people born after 1980 think that the Holocaust is a ‘myth’ or that it is heavily ‘exaggerated.’ As a society, we have a lot of work to do. And fast, too.”

The survey also finds that 54% of all respondents — and 59% of those under age 40 — do not know that 6 million Jews were murdered. Some 29 percent believe that the figure is 2 million or fewer.