This @nytimes story is going around and it's a chilling reminder how little Americans (and of course, not only Americans) learn about history, including history that is not at all that ancient. nytimes.com/2018/04/12/us/…
HOWEVER.
It's presented as if memories of the Holocaust are getting worse, but without actually citing any (any!) evidence that this might be the case.
It's presented as if memories of the Holocaust are getting worse, but without actually citing any (any!) evidence that this might be the case.
There are, perhaps, good reasons to use the tactics of alarm -- Holocaust survivors -- a big part of my Holocaust education as a child -- are rarer every day. We've seen a return of hyper-nationalism and anti-semitism (as well as the range of other bigotries) in Europe and the US
Here are the survey results the Times is reporting on: cc-69bd.kxcdn.com/wp-content/upl…
Here are some results from the current survey, paired with results from surveys back to the 1980s:
Today -- do fewer people seem to care about the Holocaust compared with the past? Could it happen again? 
Well, in 1992, only 72% of Americans believed it was essential or very important "to know about and understand the Holocaust."
Today, 11% of US adults haven't heard about the Holocaust!
In 1985, 32% of respondents didn't know.
Today, 31% of US adults think fewer than 2 million Jews were killed (the correct answer is about 6 million).
In 1992, 25% guessed it was 2 million or fewer, 10% guessed 20 million, and fully 20% didn't even have an answer.
Today, 41% of respondents couldn't even approximate an identification of Auschwitz.
In 1992, fully 38% of respondents couldn't get the right answer, and in this case they had two other names offered to jog their memories!
Today, should all students learn about the Holocaust in school? 93% of respondents say yes.
In 1994, only 87% said learning about the Holocaust in school was very or even somewhat important.
This poll in 2006 had only 79% of respondents saying they strongly or even somewhat supported mandatory Holocaust education.
Am I arguing we should be complacent about Holocaust education? Of course not.
That everything is A-OK with the state of historical education in the US more generally. Not at all.
That everything is A-OK with the state of historical education in the US more generally. Not at all.
But the framing here is troubling -- that historical knowledge and care about the Holocaust is dependent on closeness in time, and that as survivors and memories slip away, we are doomed. That's just not true.
It's possible *more* Americans care about Holocaust education today than they have in the past. But you wouldn't even consider that the way this article was framed.
Which is why an article about historical memory *should itself historicize* the very historical memory it is describing.
/Fin.
/Fin.
As a bonus, two more polls from 1994, showing that compared with today's 11% who couldn't identify the Holocaust, then 13% to 18% couldn't either.
One additional thought: closeness in time does not equal depth of knowledge. What came to be called the Holocaust was certainly reported on both during and immediately after WWII, but it didn't become a major subject in popular understanding until the 1960s.
This was true not only of the United States but also Israel, and for both the Eichmann trial in 1961 served as a watershed for public education and redefining what the Holocaust meant.
Another thought (I had earlier but didn’t get to write until now): what *would* be interesting would be to see if the underlying demographics that produced what I think are similar results 25+ years ago are in fact the same, or not.
Today’s poll focuses on what they claim Millennials don’t know. But in 1992, were Gen Xers the most ignorant? Or were older Americans? Rural? Who knows? That’s a reason poll results without demographic cross tabs are very fraught.
