Do Australians really not know about the Holocaust? That’s certainly the impression you’d get, reading reports on a recent survey of Australians’ Holocaust knowledge. In fact, that’s exactly what the media are claiming.
A quarter of Australians don’t know about the Holocaust that saw six million Jewish people killed in one of the worst genocides the world has seen.
It’s not just The Australian reporting this, either: Quarter of Australians don’t know about the Holocaust, survey finds, hooted the Canberra Times. Aussie shame: Nation’s Holocaust ignorance exposed, shrieked the Courier-Mail.
But — is it true? As I keep reminding BFD readers, whenever a headline claims things like, “study finds”, “science says”, and “survey reveals”, always assume that it doesn’t until you read the study or survey in question for yourself.
But first, let’s read some more of what the media claimed.
The critical gap in historical awareness has been revealed by Australia’s first national survey of Holocaust knowledge, and will be used to push for consistent and mandatory Holocaust education in school curriculums across the country.
Each participant was asked nine factual questions about the Holocaust. After their total score of correct answers was calculated, the survey found 24 per cent of respondents had little to no knowledge about the Holocaust.
By comparison 33 per cent had a reasonable level of knowledge, 28 per cent had a very good level of knowledge and 15 per cent had an excellent level of knowledge.
The Australians
Keeping in mind my admonition about not believing what the media tell you about studies and surveys, what does the survey really find?
Firstly, nearly all Australians actually know about the Shoah. 80% know when it happened. Whether their grasp of what it was is faulty depends on how you accept the answers. There are plenty of confused and not-completely-accurate ones, but not many that are flat-out wrong. The report itself acknowledges that “A small proportion did not know or refused to answer questions about the Holocaust. Further, a very small proportion denied the Holocaust”.
Still, nearly two-thirds of respondents knew such things as what the Final Solution and the ghettos were. Just over half knew the correct death toll, while half knew slightly less common knowledge such as the location of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Almost none denied that the Shoah happened, that it was exaggerated, or that people “still talk too much” about it.
The Gandel Foundation’s CEO, Vedran Drakulic, rightly points out the survey shows overwhelming support for Holocaust education. “88 per cent of Australians agree that we can learn lessons for today from what happened in the Holocaust – to me that’s massive,” he said. I agree.
So why did none of the media lead with that?
The Australian Jewish News coverage was much less sensationalist and far more accurate than the general media.
Where there are gaps in some Australians’ knowledge is in the finer points of Shoah history: the Nuremberg Laws, for instance, or the Einzatzgruppen. To leap from that, to claiming that “Nearly a quarter (24%) of the adult Australian population has little to no knowledge of the Holocaust” seems an unfair over-reach from what the survey actually shows.
Where there might be grounds for concern is the lack of knowledge of Australia’s reluctance to accept Jewish refugees prior to the War. Peter Kohn in the AJN correctly points out that “Australians’ knowledge about their country’s own history where it intersects with the Holocaust is significantly lower than their general knowledge about the Holocaust”.
Balancing that, perhaps, is that the survey demonstrates just how little anti-Semitism — which is soaring in Europe in particular — is blighting Australia. “The number of people who explicitly support Antisemitic tropes is very low,” the survey admits. They note with concern that a significant number of respondents “neither agreed or disagreed” with common anti-Semitic tropes. I guess it depends on whether you’re a half-full or half-empty kinda guy.
Another concerning subtext to the survey’s results is the generational decline in the level of knowledge.
Baby Boomers and Silent Generation (the generation who actually lived through the events) had the best grasp of facts, followed by Gen X, then Millennials. I shudder to think what Gen Z’s knowledge might be.
As I recently wrote, You Can’t Think Critically If You Don’t Know Anything. Increasingly, the Holocaust is about the only thing students are taught about the 20th century — but only in the most facile way. It’s no wonder, I concluded, that we’re dealing with a generation who think that calling everyone “Nazis” is the acme of debate.
Australians also, interestingly, appear to have a much better grasp of the Holocaust than Americans.
Still, while it might be correct to point out that there are conspicuous gaps in Australians’ grasp of the finer points of the tragedy (and how it relates to Australia), it’s disingenuous and denigrating for the mainstream media to shriek that we don’t know anything. Because my take-home from the survey is that Australians are more-or-less knowledgeable on the broad history of the Shoah — and that that knowledge correlates directly with low levels of anti-Semitism and lower levels of intolerance generally.
Which sounds like good news, to me.