To feel despair about holocaust deniers

[bananaramaspyjamas]

How shocking that 1 in 20 denies the holocaust. I'm quite horrified by that figure and find it really troubling.

I was at work earlier today with a group of young people. I was discussingbthia in the staff room with a colleague a similar age to me (40s) and the late teen/early 20s people sked what the holocaust was! Only 1 out of 7 of them knew!! They knew what we were on about when explained (well most did) but the word holocaust threw them I think.
Very depressing.

Yanbu - it is truly horrible.
I don’t know why but the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust separate the deaths of Jews by the Nazis, specifying this as the holocaust and then in another section cover “Nazi Persecution”.

The Porrajmos (Roma and Sinti sometimes known as gypsies)
200,000 killed 25% of the population

Disabled people
1933 and 1939, 360,000 individuals were subjected to forced sterilisation
250,000 killed

Gay men - imprissoned 50,000 before the war
12-15,000 homosexuals/men thought to be homosexual sent to concentration camps. After the war the allies did not recognise the men as victims and they could not access reparations

Lesbians were not rounded up but were persecuted in other ways

Asocials (included alcoholics, drug addicts, prostitutes and pacifists)

Black people - underwent forced sterilisation and black POW treated much worse

Freemasons - mamy imprisoned in concentration camps

Jehovah’s Witnesses- imprisoned 8000, killed 1500

Non Jewish Poles and Skavs - Poles deported to Germany for forced labour 1.5 million
Killed 1.9 million
Slavs - mass killings

political opponents – primarily communists, trade unionists and social democrats.
27,000 imprisonments in concentration camps

Lest we forget

www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/nazi-persecution/

This was my dissertation topic 10 years ago. It's been going on for a long time. Nationalism and the far right is on the rise and with that comes denial of the holocaust. It's horrifying

Some of the comments on this thread worry me.

Kennehora I don't know why she's picking on me. I never said DM readers.

I have read what people have said about the sample size. I accept what they are saying. About the incorrect % doesn't go up much after 1000.

But I still think it's a small sample size. I guess I just don't want to believe The 2000 questioned are representative of the UK population.

I could survey 2000 school mums from my school. And it wouldn't probably be representative of the UK as a whole.

I could poll 2000 fat/obese/anorexic/Malaysians/diabetics/trans. (Just joking) About something niche, or something specific, or eating 20 mars bars a day ...... and the results...,, might be a bit skewed.

And they probably wouldn't be representative if he UK population.

Do you too think the results of this sample is the same as if ..... a MN poll was done? Or is it representative of the UK population?

And I don't know what the demographic is. I just don't like the reporting style of this BBC article.

What on earth?!? We are taught about the holocaust and ww2 more than any other time in history during secondary school, infact, I think they need to widen the subject abit to include more recent genocides such as Rwanda, Bosnia... I honestly cannot believe that anyone would deny the holocaust happened.. So ignorant and actually so sad and scary that people think that way?!? So many Jewish people alongside black people, gay people, anyone who wasn't white persecuted just simply for being different and people deny it less than 100 years on?!? Simply blows my mind that people could be that ignorant.... But we are living in a time that even with the amount of news coverage we have people are so taken in by propaganda and fake news. A time when people do not seem to question things they see and get brainwashed so actually I can believe it... Education is one thing but to use it is another...

Its hard to believe, but it could be true. Just today I met a climate change denier! And she was a nurse, so a person educated in science at a university level!

Doodlebug
Surely if you did your dissertation on the subject you will know it isn't just members of the far right that deny the holocaust, but these from the fair left too and they are both on the rise and both sides of the extreme need condemned equally.

Plaque at Auschwitz.

For the pp who mentioned that the survey said Jew, and didn't mention Roma etc.

Where does it say that it's Daily Mail readers polled?

It doesn't, yet some posters are very eager to debunk the study or indulge in 'whataboutery' which is as sinister, in its own way, as the result of the study itself. Not ignorance, but minimising.

Other Genocides commemorated today

Cambodia- whole population under Khmer Rouge. Ethnic minority groups were particularly targeted
Civilian deaths about two million

Rwanda. One million tutsis and moderate Hutus

Bosnia - 8,000 Muslim men and boys over 12 killed at Srebrenica

Darfur- ongoing
This civil war has led to the deaths of between 200,000 and 400,000 civilians, although estimates vary greatly, and this figure could be much higher
2.6 million people displaced

Lest we forget

www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/nazi-persecution/

Oblomov19
A survey of mumsnet users wouldn't be representative of the UK as a whole as it has mainly female used base, same with your school it only represents a certain area of the UK.

I understand why it's hard to believe, it's because we surround ourselves with people of similar views, and morals, but so do people who deny the holocaust.

As hard as it is to believe, you need to believe it or they will just grow in strength and numbers.

What is it on the reporting style you don't like?

Kennehora

I wonder why you think this has been forgotten

I think this as well. Having spoken to friends over the years many, many didn't know other groups as well as Jews were targeted. I think popular culture is maybe to blame. Films such as Shindler's List make no mention of other groups. In this case it might be because it was about a particular concentration camp that didn't house non Jews? I can't recall a popular film about, for example Gypsies, being exterminated though.

I'm nearly fifty, I didn't learn anything about the holocaust, or the slave trade, at school, I definitely knew about both though, even at a young age, it was just knowledge you sort of absorbed around you. It was only in my 20s that I learn it wasn't just Jews who were victims, that's when I started asking others if they knew that, most didn't. I kind of get the impression you think its anti-semitic to think other groups aren't mentioned and you think they are talked about. I don't know about that, I hope I'm not anti-semitic, I know that I didn't learn this until my 20s and most people I spoke to afterwards didn't know.

I'm going to Auschwitz in the summer with my children, it's part of a wider trip, they'll be 10 (11 in a few days) 12 and 13. I'm a bit worried they are too young.

This is what the trust says about the survey

“The survey of over 2,000 people (carried out by Opinion Matters and weighted to be a representative sample of UK adults) was commissioned by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust - the charity set up by Government to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.”

www.hmd.org.uk/news/we-release-research-to-mark-holocaust-memorial-day-2019/

I'm not sure about this. The stat tends to suggest there are millions of Holocaust deniers in the UK. But if you were to ask the great british public whether the moon was made of the same stuff as chicken bones, or whether water is technically a type of metal, at least 5% will give you a blank/gormless look and say 'yes'.

On one level this is pretty depressing, but I don't see it as anything more sinister than 'one in 20 people is really, really thick'.

OnlyJoined, maybe my post was too teasing. But that is exactly the point I was making.

You can't ask only school mums about government policy on childbirth.

You can't ask only diabetics about carbs.

Puzzledandpissedoff

As for that video, yes, I think lots of people will think they're actors. My experience of, for example, anti-vaxers and flat earthers (yes I do know one) is that no amount of evidence will make them change their minds, I'm sure the same is true of Holocaust deniers.

The headline is:

5% of UK adults don't believe the Holocaust happened.

Oh well. Glad I'm not part of that 5%.

From today's Guardian article:
That poll found that one in three people knew little or nothing about the Holocaust, and an average of 5% said they had never heard of it. In France, 20% of those aged 18-34 said they had never heard of the Holocaust; in Austria, the figure was 12%. A survey in the US last year found that 9% of millennials said they had not heard, or did not think they had heard, of the Holocaust.
The scale of ignorance about the Holocaust has shocked experts. Olivia Marks-Woldman, of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, said: “I must stress that I don’t think [the poll respondents] are active Holocaust deniers – people who deliberately propagate and disseminate vile distortions. But their ignorance means they are susceptible to myths and distortions.” The Holocaust is taught in schools as part of the history curriculum, but “that might only be one lesson”, she added. “And people who are middle-aged or over may never have been taught about it.”

My understanding is that one in twenty people said that they did not know the meaning of the word Holocaust. This is absolutely not the same as denying that it happened, it's ignorance. Given how many people never learn to functionally read and write or do basic maths I'm not surprised.

I think it's inflammatory to report this as holocaust denial.

Oblomov19
That is why it says it is a representative poll. It is you and others that are minimising the poll by claiming it's too small.

Can you tell us what it about the way it is reported that you don't like, because I don't understand?

They are the same people who think that 9/11 was orchestrated by the CIA 😒

thedancingbear
but I don't see it as anything more sinister than 'one in 20 people is really, really thick

I think your probably right about a lot of them but I think that for a very significant number this thinking is a lot more sinister. I think we really underestimate the level of racism in the UK.

I watched a documentary on the holocaust last night.
How can people think that that footage was faked?
I also feel it's not taught enough at school and we are in danger of glossing over this very important time if history.

Surely if you did your dissertation on the subject you will know it isn't just members of the far right that deny the holocaust, but these from the fair left too and they are both on the rise and both sides of the extreme need condemned equally.

The inconvenient truth for some it seems.

snog
There is a link to the actual poll above 5 percent deny it happened, not that they'd never heard of it.