Auschwitz - a beer festival? Some 11-16 year old seem to think it is!

[Big Geordie]

Just read this on another forum and thought it worth sharing;

 

Some schoolchildren believe Auschwitz is the name of a type of beer or a religious festival, rather than the notorious concentration camp. Skip related content

 

 

Around 1.3 million people perished in the Nazi death camp during the Second World War, but a survey of more than 1,000 secondary school pupils aged 11-16 revealed that a quarter still did not know its purpose.

 

Of those, about 10% were not sure what it was, 8% thought it was a country bordering Germany, 2% thought it was a beer, the same proportion said it was a religious festival and a further 1% said it was a type of bread.

 

Miramax and the London Jewish Cultural Centre, which commissioned the survey to mark the DVD release of The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, said that, as there are around 4.5 million 11 to 16-year-olds in the UK, this is the equivalent of 90,000 youngsters wrongly identifying Auschwitz as a drink and 45,000 mistaking it for bread.

 

The poll found that six in 10 youngsters did not know what the Final Solution was, with a fifth claiming it was the name of peace talks held to end the war.

 

And it revealed that, despite the Holocaust being specified on the secondary National Curriculum as a subject that pupils must be taught, only just over a third (37%) knew that the Holocaust claimed the lives of six million Jews, with many drastically under-estimating the death toll.

 

While 97% of those questioned could identify Adolf Hitler from a photograph, those who could not mistook famous figures such as Winston Churchill, Salvador Dali and Albert Einstein for the dictator.

 

The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas tells the story of a German boy's friendship with a Jewish child held in a concentration camp.

 

Miramax is working with the charity Film Education to encourage the film to be used as a way of improving children's knowledge about the Holocaust.

 

The survey conducted by Dubit questioned 1,200 secondary school children aged 11-16 between February 9 and 27.

 

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Mind boggling really, especially when it's supposed to be on the national curriculum as a subject that must be taught. Is this a fault of the children, or more schools for not doing what they are supposed to? Kids of this age (11-16) should be fully aware of what happened back then, IMO.

[Fatwax]

I know people that aren't (or weren't) aware of Auschwitz. One of them was a German girl as it happens, who said that they weren't taught about any of the horrific acts undertaken by the nazis in the war.

 

I went to a catholic secondary school and we weren't taught about the inquisition, the crusades or anything that would show the catholic religion in a bad light. If it wasn't for me reading up on my own it would have been as if these things never happened.

[Northerngimp]

We dont teach kids of the atrocities the British Empire carried out and how we actually knicked other peoples countries off them.

[AyeDubbleYoo]

By the way, 10 + 8 + 2 + 1 = 21%, which is not a quarter.

 

And the sample size of 1200 is pretty small, and some of them were presumably at the bottom end of the 11-16 age range, meaning they may not even have covered WW2 yet.

 

Also, of those wrong answers - 10% said they weren't sure, which is surely less of a headline than 'OMG kids think Auschwitz is a beer festival!!!'

 

Was this survey multiple choice? Then I would also put most of the other answers into the 'don't know' category, they will have just ticked anything. It doesn't mean they're walking around thinking Auschwitz is a bread FFS!

 

The holocaust is terrible, and everyone should know about and remember it, but I'm not sure what this survey actually adds to anything.

[Dave]

Nice bit of advertising there.

[Big Geordie]

We dont teach kids of the atrocities the British Empire carried out and how we actually knicked other peoples countries off them.

 

Agreed - the British Empire has not covered itself in glory over the years either. The wars with Scotland are a prime example of oppression. What I will say is that the British Empire never tried to wipe out an entire race (to my knowledge) as the Nazis did. There-in lies the difference.

 

However, what makes the Holocaust different is that it took place in fairly recent history, it has been covered extensively (books, film and TV), so kids should be made more aware of it, IMO. It's when people forget about such things, that the same mistakes are made again in the future.

[OzzieMandias]

We dont teach kids of the atrocities the British Empire carried out and how we actually knicked other peoples countries off them.

 

Agreed - the British Empire has not covered itself in glory over the years either. The wars with Scotland are a prime example of oppression. What I will say is that the British Empire never tried to wipe out an entire race (to my knowledge) as the Nazis did. There-in lies the difference.

 

However, what makes the Holocaust different is that it took place in fairly recent history, it has been covered extensively (books, film and TV), so kids should be made more aware of it, IMO. It's when people forget about such things, that the same mistakes are made again in the future.

 

We wiped out the entire native population of Tasmania, except for one woman, who died of loneliness.

[OzzieMandias]

I don't think the poll results are that shocking, tbh.

 

75% of those surveyed DID know what Auschwitz is. That's pretty good. I was never taught any of this stuff at that age.

[BlueStar]

Some people thought it was a beer, some a religious festival.  Can't see anywhere where anyone thought it was a beer festival

[Northerngimp]

We dont teach kids of the atrocities the British Empire carried out and how we actually knicked other peoples countries off them.

 

Agreed - the British Empire has not covered itself in glory over the years either. The wars with Scotland are a prime example of oppression. What I will say is that the British Empire never tried to wipe out an entire race (to my knowledge) as the Nazis did. There-in lies the difference.

 

However, what makes the Holocaust different is that it took place in fairly recent history, it has been covered extensively (books, film and TV), so kids should be made more aware of it, IMO. It's when people forget about such things, that the same mistakes are made again in the future.

 

[Northerngimp]

We dont teach kids of the atrocities the British Empire carried out and how we actually knicked other peoples countries off them.

 

Agreed - the British Empire has not covered itself in glory over the years either. The wars with Scotland are a prime example of oppression. What I will say is that the British Empire never tried to wipe out an entire race (to my knowledge) as the Nazis did. There-in lies the difference.

 

However, what makes the Holocaust different is that it took place in fairly recent history, it has been covered extensively (books, film and TV), so kids should be made more aware of it, IMO. It's when people forget about such things, that the same mistakes are made again in the future.

 

We wiped out the entire native population of Tasmania, except for one woman, who died of loneliness.

 

A one nil away win.

[pedro111]

Thing is, Im 26 and if I remember correctly I was taught NOTHING about ww2 in school. Thats a disgrace really thinking back.  Now its a subject Im hugely interested in but I can understand why there would be people my age who have no clue what Auschwitz was.

 

You can also understand why kids dont know what it is becasue history can be so boring to people so young.  From my experience its not untill I got older that I developed an real interest in history. At school I could show an interest at some times but most of the time I couldnt give a fuck tbh.

[pedro111]

We dont teach kids of the atrocities the British Empire carried out and how we actually knicked other peoples countries off them.

 

Agreed - the British Empire has not covered itself in glory over the years either. The wars with Scotland are a prime example of oppression . What I will say is that the British Empire never tried to wipe out an entire race (to my knowledge) as the Nazis did. There-in lies the difference.

 

However, what makes the Holocaust different is that it took place in fairly recent history, it has been covered extensively (books, film and TV), so kids should be made more aware of it, IMO. It's when people forget about such things, that the same mistakes are made again in the future.

 

The thing is, the British Empire was also actually a great force for good.  Nazi Germany wasnt.

[Big Geordie]

History was a subject I was really good at, at school. However, I stupidly chose not to do it as a GCSE. God knows why!

 

Agree that in years gone by (certainly for me during the mid-late 80's) - what we were taught in school at that time will have been sanitized. It was perhaps only when I left school, that I became aware of the Holocaust. In saying that - folk my age had nowhere near the amount of resources which kids have available today.

[AyeDubbleYoo]

I can remember seeing some horrible images of the holocaust at school, including one piece of footage in particular that showed amaciated bodies and open incinerators.

 

I can still remember the exact pictures, truly harrowing stuff.

 

(I've seen Boy in the Striped Pyjamas btw, that's also pretty shocking).

[Big Geordie]

Ian - if you can, have a look for a tv-movie called Nuremberg. It's based on the trials and also includes footage of what the Allies found when they liberated some of the camps. Powerful stuff indeed.

[Guest optimistic nit]

By the way, 10 + 8 + 2 + 1 = 21%, which is not a quarter.

 

And the sample size of 1200 is pretty small, and some of them were presumably at the bottom end of the 11-16 age range, meaning they may not even have covered WW2 yet.

 

Also, of those wrong answers - 10% said they weren't sure, which is surely less of a headline than 'OMG kids think Auschwitz is a beer festival!!!'

 

Was this survey multiple choice? Then I would also put most of the other answers into the 'don't know' category, they will have just ticked anything. It doesn't mean they're walking around thinking Auschwitz is a bread FFS!

 

The holocaust is terrible, and everyone should know about and remember it, but I'm not sure what this survey actually adds to anything.

 

pretty much what i think about this survey.

[AyeDubbleYoo]

Nice bit of advertising there.

 

So true, not sure I'm happy about Miramax being involved in a survey of such an important and emotive cultural event in order to sell a film... no matter how important you could say the film itself is.

 

 

[thomas]

Oh get a grip.

 

Is it really so difficult to acknowledge that a healthy percentage of the children of your fine nation might be dumb as bricks?  I'm sure that, if this was report was on American children, instead of this 3 ring circus of denial, rationalizations and skepticism the lol's would be non-stop.  You hypocritical knobs. 

 

The last 15 years have produced probably the dumbest generation this planet has ever seen, in every country.  I weep for the future, I really do.

 

there's my Ameri-rage post for the month out of the way.

[DJ_NUFC]

I blame TV.

[AyeDubbleYoo]

Oh get a grip.

 

Is it really so difficult to acknowledge that a healthy percentage of the children of your fine nation might be dumb as bricks?  I'm sure that, if this was report was on American children, instead of this 3 ring circus of denial, rationalizations and skepticism the lol's would be non-stop.  You hypocritical knobs. 

 

The last 15 years have produced probably the dumbest generation this planet has ever seen, in every country.  I weep for the future, I really do.

 

there's my Ameri-rage post for the month out of the way.

 

Sorry that's a load of balls.

 

I don't doubt a lot of kids in this country are a bit thick, but people have been saying stuff like you just came out with for hundreds of years, if not thousands.

 

I stand by everything I said about the survey.

[thomas]

You didn't actually say anything about it though, that's the problem.  You asked questions about details and then proceeded to base your opinion upon a negative assumption about the answers to those questions that you don't have.

 

Yes, every generation casts aspersions upon prior, so that must mean they're all untrue? 

 

And 10+8+2+2+1 = 23, not 21.  With fractional percentages likely it's probably right around 25%.

[DJ_NUFC]

djfkghdf;gwned!

[AyeDubbleYoo]

You didn't actually say anything about it though, that's the problem.  You asked questions about details and then proceeded to base your opinion upon a negative assumption about the answers to those questions that you don't have.

 

Yes, every generation casts aspersions upon prior, so that must mean they're all untrue? 

 

And 10+8+2+2+1 = 23, not 21. 

 

Not sure where this unnecessary sniping at me has come from, I thought everything I wrote about the survey was perfectly reasonable - I still do.

 

All I'm saying is that people have been saying things like 'young people today are...' for generations, and it's just as much nonsense now as it's always been.

[Nobody]

Ten years old I think I was when I first heard about the holocaust from school. Remember finding it deeply disturbing even at that young age and have been interested in it ever since.

I don't find these numbers shocking at all though, and I really don't see the reason why they'd make this survey from 11 to 16 year olds, the difference is just too big for it to matter. If it was almost a quarter of 16 year olds, it would be fair to say that the numbers a shocking, but the facts are that it's far more likely that most of the wrong answers will have come from the younger kids.

Also, if it's multiple answers, I wouldn't discard the idea that a 16 year old kid wouldn't take this seriously and just tick the beer box.