45% of Britons have no idea what Auschwitz was
I came across this article a few days ago. It's a survey conducted by the BBC that found that 45% of Britons have never heard of Auschwitz, much less know what happened there 60 years ago. Among people under 35, nearly 60% have never heard of Auschwitz.
Sadly, my guess is that, if the same survey had been given here in the U.S., the numbers of people who have never heard of Auschwitz would likely have been even higher.
Sadly, my guess is that, if the same survey had been given here in the U.S., the numbers of people who have never heard of Auschwitz would likely have been even higher.
Hi, I'm from the UK. There are only a couple of things that I can use in the defence of the UK public. There is a problem (particularly among the less economicaly able) of an anti-intelectual culture that has taken hold particularly among males. This 'Yob/Lad' culture views any schooling as 'boring', and so some would have missed out on this aspect of WW2. Also, the sample size wasn't fantastic. However, many of us in the UK try to spread awareness of the Shoah. I also imagine that many had heard of Auschwitz, but could not recal where from.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, welcome to blogging, I've bookmarked yours, and plan to view it every now and then.
(Sorry for the spelling - Dyslexia)
Una autentica vergüenza, y casi seguro que en ese horrible lugar habria algún inglés también...
ReplyDeletePosted by chaveacanino
The BBC will often - rather naughtily considering its public service remit - use this sort of polling and then draw rather tendentious / contentious postulates to generate interest in the BBC - in a rather tabloid fashion. Also, I think the same could have been said of my generation not having a clue what the Somme, Paschendale, Ypres, Verdun, etc meant. I suspect the same people polled would know just as little about Rwanda, 4 million slaughtered only ten years ago ... Oops I think I was trying to be reassuring but it didn't work ! PS got your link from Butterflies and Wheels
ReplyDeleteNevermind the yob culture in the UK, the middle class are also having the horror of the holocaust diminished by ill-advised comparisons between contemporary issues and Nazi Germany's atrocities.
ReplyDeleteMuch of this is related to the fashionable anti-Americanism and virulent anti-Israeli propaganda that has become common in recent years.
Greetings from Black Triangle.
I think that if you rephrase it as "unsound or obviously fallacious comparisons to the Nazis or the Holocaust demeans the Holocaust," then it's pretty hard to argue with that. The problem is, everyone’s so quick with the allusions to Hitler and the Holocaust without actually understanding what they are talking about.
ReplyDeleteToo many of these people who compare Bush, Israel, Sharon, Hussein, or whomever to Hitler clearly don’t have even a basic knowledge of Nazi history or Holocaust history—which can be easily demonstrated by asking them to justify their analogy using historical facts. I’m always willing to listen to and consider historical analogies to Naziism or the Holocaust when the person making them can back it up with a good understanding of history. If they can, I take the analogy seriously. The problem is, they seldom can.
There is no such thing as "yob culture" in the UK, this is just the usual middle-class snobbery which blights this wretched country. There are plenty of yobs here, some with regional accents on scruffy housing estates and many with posh accents in London, Oxford and Cambridge.
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