Survey: 1 in 10 young adults in U.S. think Jewish people caused Holocaust

About 1 in 10 young adults in America think Jewish people caused the Holocaust, a new survey finds.

And 10 percent of people in that age group say they don’t believe that the Holocaust happened or aren’t sure that it took place, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany said in results published Wednesday.

The findings come as almost half of millennials and people in Generation Z reported seeing “Holocaust denial or distortion posts on social media” or elsewhere online, results from the organization show. The Holocaust occurred around the time of World War II, when the German Nazis killed millions of people who were Jewish and from other backgrounds.

In the United States, “there is a clear lack of awareness of key historical facts; 63 percent of all national survey respondents do not know that six million Jews were murdered and 36 percent thought that ‘two million or fewer Jews’ were killed during the Holocaust,” the Claims Conference said in a news release.

When young adults were asked about their views, the survey found “23 percent of respondents believe the Holocaust happened, but the number of Jews who died has been greatly exaggerated, is a myth and did not happen, or are unsure.”

Denial of history isn’t new. Groups have long said the Holocaust didn’t exist as a way to try to promote anti-Semitic views, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“Holocaust denial delegitimizes the suffering of Jews, and exacerbates intergenerational traumas by denying Holocaust history, and codifies anti-Semitic propaganda under the guise of academic research,” the center said.

The Claims Conference, which calls the new survey results “shocking,” says it negotiates “with the government of Germany for payments to Holocaust victims and for homecare funding for elderly survivors.”