One in two young Germans don’t know ‘Holocaust’

25 April 2005

BERLIN – Only one in two Germans below the age of 24 know that the term ‘Holocaust’ is used to describe the mass murder of Jews by the Nazi regime, the daily newspaper Die Welt reported on Saturday.

The paper said this finding came from a joint study undertaken with the German television network ZDF about Germans’ knowledge of history, with the Holocaust one of 17 questions posed in the study.

The history questions were posed to 1,087 Germans above the age of 18, Die Welt reported. While only half of the younger age group knew the meaning of ‘the Holocaust’, the study found that four out of five Germans were aware of the effects of the Nazi regime’s views on race.

The paper said that among some general conclusions drawn from the study, men tended to be better informed about history than women. On the Holocaust question, for example, twice as many women as men did not understand the term, Die Welt said.

The study also found that eastern Germans tended to know history better than those in the west, the paper said.

DPA

Subject: German news