Concern about European poll results
A CNN poll of Europeans in seven countries found more than one-third said they have no substantial knowledge of the Holocaust.
A CNN poll of Europeans in seven countries found that more than a quarter believe Jews have too much influence in business and finance and more than one-third said they have no substantial knowledge of the Holocaust.
Yad Vashem, Israel’s state museum on the Holocaust, said in a statement Tuesday that it “is deeply concerned” about the data, primarily over how many Europeans claimed to know little or nothing about the genocide.
“Additionally, the survey highlights the troubling fact that many entrenched hateful antisemitic tropes persist in European civilisation,” Yad Vashem wrote.
Only five per cent of the 7092 respondents reported never hearing about the Holocaust, but 29 per cent said they had heard about the genocide and that this was the full extent of their knowledge about it. Half of respondents said they know “a fair amount” about the Holocaust.
Robert Rozett, director of the Yad Vashem Libraries, told The AJN, “It verifies anecdotal feelings and gives a little more substance to the ideas.
“It’s not saying that what’s being done in general isn’t working, but rather that more needs to be done.”
Meanwhile, one-third of respondents said that Jews use the Holocaust to advance their own positions or goals.
The poll, performed by ComRes on the subject of antisemitism, was performed in September in Britain, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Sweden and Austria, CNN reported.
The survey featured several questions on Jewish influence: Nearly one in four said Jews have too much in conflict and wars across the world, and one in five said they have too much in the media and in politics.
Forty per cent of respondents said that Jews were at risk of racist violence in their countries and half said their governments should do more to fight antisemitism. But substantial minorities blamed Israel or Jews themselves for antisemitism.
To 28 per cent of respondents, antisemitism in their countries mostly owed to Israel’s actions, they said.
And 18 per cent said the phenomenon was a response to the everyday behaviour of Jewish people.
JTA
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