AUSCHWITZ + 80

COULD IT HAPPEN AGAIN? MOST SAY YES. HERE’S WHY THAT ANSWER IS (WEIRDLY) GOOD NEWS.

Liberation: 80 years ago today.

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was 80 years ago today that Allied forces liberated Auschwitz, the death camp complex that has become synonymous not only with the Holocaust but with the human capability for evil more broadly.

The purpose of history, it is said, is to learn from the past to create a better present and future. At a memorial event I attended last night, speaker after speaker expressed grave concern about the current state of the world, the implied message being that the lessons of the past have not been adequately absorbed.

A major new survey seems to confirm this idea — but it has both bad and (weirdly) good news.

It has seemed to me that Jews and their allies have been living in a different universe from everyone else since October 7, 2023.

This new study suggests maybe we are not so far apart. That’s the good news.

The bad news is the fear that puts us on the same page: Large numbers of us agree that something like the Holocaust could happen again.

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany last week released an eight-country survey on awareness around the Holocaust in countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Austria, Germany, Poland, Hungary and Romania.

Not unexpectedly, the survey indicated that there is widespread ignorance about some of the details of the Holocaust — and indeed about the very Holocaust itself.

One in five French adults had either not heard of or were not sure they had heard of the Holocaust prior to taking the survey. Almost half of Americans could not name a single concentration camp.

That is ignorance, which is a fault of the education system and a range of factors.

More worrying, perhaps, were responses that indicated some who know about the Holocaust doubt or deny its full veracity.

Respondents were asked to agree or disagree with the statement that “the Holocaust happened, and the number of Jews who were killed during the Holocaust has been accurately and fairly described.” About one-quarter of respondents in France, Austria, Germany, Poland and Romania disagreed with this statement. A little fewer than one in five Hungarian respondents disagreed, as did 17% in the UK and 16% in the United States.

In every country, respondents in the age group 18 to 29 were more likely to disagree with this statement, which reflects the phenomenon of Holocaust diminishment. Why are younger people more likely to disbelieve the evidence? That is a real problem for our future.

Another question explicitly asked respondents whether they believed that the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust was exaggerated.

Across all age groups, those agreeing with this statement ranged from 8% in the United States and the UK to the low double digits in Germany, Austria, France and Poland, to 16% in Hungary and more than one in three in Romania. These numbers spiked precipitously among 18-to-29-year-olds.

More than half of Romanian respondents under 30 agreed that the historically accepted numbers of Jews murdered in the Holocaust were “greatly exaggerated.” Those who work in this field have a vast amount of work to do — as does society more broadly, if we subscribe to the value of learning from the past.

Amid all this is an oddly encouraging sign.

There is an enormous amount of data to sift through in this study. But the component that the Claims Conference has emphasized in its publicity around it is the finding that majorities — often large majorities — in these countries believe that “something like the Holocaust could happen again today.”

That doesn’t sound like good news, does it? It is a chilling statement on the respondents’ belief in the human capability for evil and not learning the lessons of the past. (I’ll explain why I see a silver lining.)

The number who believe another holocaust could happen ranged from 76% of adults in the United States, to 69% in the UK, 63% in France, 62% in Austria, 61% in Germany, 54% in Poland, 52% in Hungary and, in the only instance where fewer than half of respondents replied affirmatively, 44% of Romanian respondents.

If there is anything comparatively “happy” to find in a survey about the potential for genocide, it is this: the survey seems to indicate that most people recognize the threats faced by minority Jewish populations. I (and I think a great many of my Jewish friends) have felt since October 7, 2023 (at the latest) that most people do not see the threats to Jews in the world or, if they do, do not take them seriously.

Of course, this does not indicate that these people believe that something like a holocaust could happen in their society. Perhaps they are thinking of it taking place in the Middle East. I’m also not sure that the respondents were necessarily thinking of a holocaust of Jews. We know tragically well that “something like the Holocaust” could happen again because (while each genocide has been unique) we have horrifically seen successive such mass murder events in the decades since 1945.

Let’s assume, though, that the survey is evidence that people across Europe and North America (and, by extrapolation, perhaps elsewhere) see and take seriously the threats to Jews that are so clearly and intensely felt by Jews themselves.

This surprises and encourages me.

I genuinely believed there was an overwhelming indifference to the fate of Jews, based, I guess, on anecdotal evidence and too much time spent in the parts of the Internet where Jewish lives do not seem to hold the sanctity that the lives of non-Jews hold.

People do care.

The question, then, is this: Why does it seem so few people are willing to act in ways that reflect this concern?

I’ve got some thoughts.

Stay tuned.

Some people have generously asked me to make it possible to make one-time contributions to support my work, rather than the subscription-based method Substack uses. I have now set up a PayPal link for donations. If you like snappy smackdowns of antisemitism and anti-Zionism and want me to keep it up, any support is deeply appreciated. Click here.