A new study by the Jewish Claims Conference on knowledge and perceptions of the Holocaust in the Netherlands reveals major gaps.

More than half of those questioned do not know that six million Jews were murdered.

Almost a third believe it was two million or fewer.

Also, more than half of the population sees no connection between their country and the Holocaust, although 70 percent of the Jewish population was murdered.

Thomas Gutschker

Political correspondent for the European Union, NATO and the Benelux countries based in Brussels.

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A third of those questioned could not name a single concentration or extermination camp.

Only one fifth knows about the Westerbork transit camp, through which Jews were deported to other camps.

The study, published on Wednesday, shortly before Holocaust Remembrance Day, is based on a representative survey of 2,000 people in December; the error rate is 2 percent.

Knowledge gaps particularly large among young people

The ignorance is particularly great among people who are younger than forty years.

Almost a quarter of them consider the Holocaust exaggerated or even invented.

This is the highest proportion in this age group that the Jewish Claims Conference has ever measured.

France, Austria, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States have been examined in previous studies.

A third say they know someone who believes the Holocaust never happened.

After all, 90 percent had heard of Anne Frank before the survey, who was hiding from the Nazi occupiers in Amsterdam, but only 68 percent knew that she died in a concentration camp.

62 percent say they haven't visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam - it attracts more than a million visitors every year.

A fifth of all respondents agree that there are "many neo-Nazis" in the Netherlands today.

12 percent consider neo-Nazi views to be acceptable, in the group under 40 even 22 percent.

Two-thirds say antisemitism exists or is even “widespread”.

A third object to the Netherlands apologizing that the Jewish population was not adequately protected during the Holocaust.

Half support this step, which the government took three years ago.

"Declining knowledge is becoming more visible"

“With each study, the decline in knowledge and awareness about the Holocaust becomes more evident;

at the same time, there is a trend towards Holocaust denial and distortion,” said Gideon Taylor, president of the Claims Conference, which represents the interests of bereaved families and survivors of the Holocaust.

"To counteract this, we need to focus more on Holocaust education in our schools around the world."

This demand seems to be shared by a majority of respondents.

Two-thirds of all respondents and at least 57 percent of those under 40 are in favor of making teaching about the Holocaust compulsory in schools.

A total of 55 percent state that they first heard about the systematic murder of Jews at school.

Although the study does not address it itself, the results could also be partly related to the high proportion of migrants.

According to the latest data from the Dutch statistical authority, 15 percent of the population was born in another country and another 12 percent have at least one foreign parent.

In both cases, most come from a non-European country.

The group with connections to Turkey and Morocco, where guest workers were previously recruited, as well as to the former colony of Suriname and to countries in Asia, is particularly large.

While in many parts of the world the Holocaust is not taught in schools, in the Muslim world there is also widespread denial related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In books, popular media, and state propaganda, mass murder is portrayed as an invention by Jews in an attempt to blackmail the world.

In an Allensbach poll last year, 54 percent of Muslims living in Germany agreed that Jews used their status as victims of the genocide for their own gain.

In the general population it was 34 percent.