Clueless Youth: Half of Young Germans Can't Define Holocaust

[wookie294]

April 25, 2005

SPIEGEL'S DAILY TAKE

It may be the season of ceremonies to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II -- and the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps -- but according to a new survey testing Germans on their own history, one out of every two Germans under 24 doesn't even know what the Holocaust was. The newspaper Die Welt, which commissioned the poll along with public TV station ZDF, reported on Friday that while 80 percent of the total population could identify the Holocaust as the murder of 6 million Jews during World War II, just about half of the young people polled were clueless about what the term meant. Women were more than twice as likely as men not to be able to identify the term -- 21.3 percent as opposed to 9.9 percent.

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,353262,00.html

[Kagemusha]

1. Hey, the Holocaust means a lot more than that to many people.

Knowing exactly what definition is LARGE enough may itself be a cause for confusion. Narrowing it down to only the deaths may not really work for people immersed in the word since birth.

[PartyPooper]

2. Gee, we're all doomed if no one can remember. History will be repeated.

You can bet on it.

I see it with Vietnam. The young US kids don't have a clue. And, the nationalism in this country is running rampant. Welcome to Iraq 2005!

Just like TB and Polio, fascism is alive and well in this world.

[Dirk39]

3. Oops...

If I'm informed correctly, not even 8% of U.S. citizens know, how many people were massmurdered in Vietnam by U.S. citizens. And not a single U.S. citizen was ever punished for this genocide.

I'm not surprised.
But women should simply not be allowed to vote:-)

Furthermore, I propose a survey among U.S. citizens about how many Iraqis were killed by U.S. citizens during the last years - more than 100.000. Not to mention more than a million Iraqis dying, while Clinton was the president of the U.S.A. And it's not six decades ago...


That "80 percent of the total population could identify the Holocaust as the murder of 6 million Jews during World War II" is rather a sign of an educated population, at least in the Fox-News world we live in...

Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[Kolesar]

5. America killed millions of her native people

There were 8 to 10 million people in what became the United States when the European colonists arrived. Now that population is less than 2 million. The extermination of the Plains "Indians" by the US Army is a national disgrace.

[Zynx]

6. The vast majority of that was disease.

Whether that was mostly intentional or not remains a matter open for debate.

[Kolesar]

7. The blankets infected with smallpox virus story

Whatever was the extent of the smallpox story, the US government had a shameful relocation program. Those who did not cooperate were hunted down and killed. The US also attacked the economic lifeblood of the Plains Indians--they killed the bison herds. So starvation was "our" other method.

[Sequoia]

10. Oh, it was intentional all right

"Nits make lice" Sheriden

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[despairing optimist]

4. At least half the German kids know. I bet only 10% of US kids know

much about the Holocaust, let alone Hitler's inspiration for mass extermination, which was the US policy of "resettling" Native Americans.

[Name removed]

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[MrPrax]

8. Young People Are Clueless...

about a lot of things--whether this is a function of being Young or a function of the 'education' system, and it's getting worst, who knows?

I assume this cluelessness has something to do with not 'voting' as well

But why knowledge of the 'Holocaust' is usually the 'litmus test' of ignorance and some 'harbringer' of decline and not, say the name of a country's leader or identifying Denmark or Afghanistan on a map, isn't--who can only speculate?

[goddess40]

9. I hate blanket statements like that.

This is the youngest user of this account, and I would like to say that not all of the young people out there are clueless. I like to think of myself as well informed and well read, thank you very much.

[Sequoia]

11. My child is 9 and she knows about Nazi Germany.

We were watching "The Sound of Music" a few weeks back and now she's reading "The Diary of Anne Frank". We've told her about them before but the movie sparked her interest more. She hasn't seen any oven photos though.

[MrPrax]

14. LOL...your're right

My apologies to young people who are informed--personally I think most young people are INFORMED it is they just are NOT responding correctly and have a rather jaundiced view of politics.

I mean, when a young person who tells me they don't bother to vote--I usually don't lie to them and say, 'oh it's important and the foundation of our democracy--it's your CIVIC duty--you don't want OTHER people to decide for YOU, do YOU?!!'. I usually say, 'kewl, neither do I'

In essense, they are probably more correct in 'ignoring' the system because the system doesn't work anyway and can snidely point out to 'previous' generations of young people and their self-serving and ineffectual attempts to 'change the system'.

At least FORMER 'young people' had jobs and could afford to move out of their parents' home...

[dhinojosa]

12. Japan's children has no idea what happened in WWII

or even know it existed.

[SOS]

13. Speaking of "clueless youth":

WHERE IN THE WORLD
Among 18- to 24-year-old Americans given maps:

87 percent cannot find Iraq

83 percent cannot find Afghanistan

76 percent cannot find Saudi Arabia

70 percent cannot find New Jersey (!!!)

49 percent cannot find New York

11 percent cannot find the United States

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/EDUCATION/11/20/geography.quiz/

[Strawman]

16. I took a geography class once with mostly teaching students

on the first day we did a map excercise so the instructor could kind of see where we were at. out of a class of roughly 20 adults, 2 couldn't find Canada. this was in Detroit, MI where Canada is literally minutes away.

[noonwitch]

21. A radio quiz this morning asked if you knew what continent the Sahara was

on. None of the callers got it right, they had to ask for help. That is just pathetic. The Detroit/Canada question is really pathetic, too. You look across the river, and there's Canada!

www.sheparddsoftware.com/

they have all kinds of geography games for kids and adults to play. Someday, I will go on Jeopardy and win big because of them!

[displacedtexan]

15. Half of Germany's youth was probably not born in "Germany."

Think about it.

When the wall fell, "Germany" (aka West Germany) took in millions of Iron Curtain people. In fact, Germany's population increased 28% almost overnight.

I learned this from watching a commercial in Germany in 1991, in which the Social Services begged citizens to take immigrants into their homes until the government could find homes for them.

[tabasco]

17. Even before the fall of the wall...

Germany had a fairly open-door immigration policy. Now that their economy is struggling with lots of unemployment, I think they are tightening immigration control.

You made a good point about the poll. Many of those polled may well have been born in Turkey or Romania.