Today, on the 74th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Birkenau, communities around the world commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day, reflecting upon the six million Jewish lives stolen and the millions of other victims of Nazi violence. However, the findings from a new study on Canadian Holocaust knowledge and awareness recently conducted by our firm underscore that reflection alone is simply not enough to ensure that something like the Holocaust never happens. What we found is that there are some critical gaps in Holocaust knowledge among Canadian adults.
Make no mistake, this is not a uniquely Canadian phenomenon. Indeed, the Canadian survey results are harrowingly similar to those in a study we conducted in the United States last year, which revealed a disquieting lack of knowledge about key Holocaust facts among American adults. To be sure, 85 percent of Canadians 89 percent of Americans have heard of the Holocaust. But even baseline Holocaust awareness is alarmingly lower among Generation Z and Millennials in both countries, where more than 20 percent respondents under age 35 had either never heard the word Holocaust before, or were not sure if they had heard of the Holocaust.
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