‘Massive Education’
Sought After
Troubling Pew Study
A Matt Silver | JE Staff
bout a week ahead of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of
Auschwitz, the Pew Research Center released findings from a new
study, “What Americans Know About the Holocaust,” revealing
that half of American adults are unaware of basic facts regarding Nazism
and the Holocaust, including the number of Jews killed and how the Nazis
came to power.

The Pew study asked nearly 13,000 respondents — Jewish and
non-Jewish adults and teenagers — four questions about the Holocaust.

Most knew that the Holocaust took place between 1930 and 1950, and
that Nazi ghettos were areas of cities where Jews were forced to live. But
only 45% of adults and 38% of teens knew that 6 million Jews died in
the Holocaust.

And 43% of participants responded that Adolf Hitler became
German chancellor “by Democratic political process,” while 25%
believed he came to power “by violently overthrowing German govern-
ment.” Another 28% said they didn’t know or had no answer.

According to Pew, “the data suggests that relatively few people in
this group express strongly negative feelings toward Jews,” and that
“respondents who get more questions right also tend to express warmer
feelings toward Jews.”
To Paul Finkelman, the president at Gratz College in Elkins Park,
where master’s and Ph.D. programs in Holocaust and genocide stud-
ies are among the offerings, the results were both disheartening and
unsurprising. “What it means is that we have to do a better job at educating people,
and what that means often is educating teachers, too,” he said.

“It’s such a huge number of people that died, and it can be seen as
too abstract,” Finkelman said. “And that’s why a good teacher can relate
that number to something that students can wrap their head around.”
There are ways to inject meaning back into the number 6 million, a
number that can be either too abstract or rote, repeated until rendered
meaninglessness. Finkelman urged that teachers should recontextual-
ize the number frequently so as to maximize the amount of times its
gravity resonates with students emotionally.

“The number has to be put in a perspective that makes sense to
people,” Finkelman said. “Six million is everybody in Iowa times
two; 6 million is more than the population of Los Angeles; 6 million
is more than all the American soldiers who died in all of America’s
wars combined: World War II, World War I, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf
War, the Iraq War, the Spanish-American War, the Civil War on both
sides — count the Confederates and the Union — the War of 1812, the
American Revolution. Add all those people up and they don’t even get
close to 6 million.”
“Six million,” he continued, “6 million is 10 times more than all of
the people who died on both sides in the Civil War.”
That method, however, won’t do much in the way of educating
Holocaust deniers — those who, according to the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum, “claim that the Holocaust was invented
Goldstein’s
Funeral Home
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