A quarter of young Dutch people believe that the Holocaust is a myth or an exaggeration

A photo in Anne Frank in the museum that was set up in the house where Nazis hid in Amsterdam.

AP - Peter Dejong

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1 min

According to a study conducted in North America and five European countries, a quarter of young Dutch people believe that the Holocaust is either a myth or an exaggeration.

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With our correspondent in Brussels,

Pierre Bénazet

The study was conducted among 2,000 Dutch people over the age of 18.

Those born after 1980 give the most denial responses.

The proportion of Dutch people who deny the reality of the Holocaust rises to 23% among young people, but for all adults, 12% believe that the Holocaust is a myth or that the number of Jews killed is much lower than six million history books.

This distortion and denial figure is on the rise and higher than any country previously surveyed.

More worryingly, neo-Nazism is seen as acceptable in similar proportions.

These revelations are all the more disturbing in the country of Anne Frank where the Shoah is nevertheless part of the general culture.

The authors believe that study after study shows a global decline in knowledge of the Holocaust.

In a typical Batavian freedom of speech statement, Prime Minister Mark Rutte says anything can be debated, but still adds that it's important that all Dutch people are at least up to date. of what really happened.

He is not the only one to be shocked and the columnist of

the irreverent news site GeenStijl

bluntly asserts that it is largely the result of the change in the Dutch social structure with many young people of extra- European Union who do not share the history of the Netherlands.

It remains that the decline of knowledge about the reality of the Holocaust is astonishing in a country where Anne Frank remains a prominent figure of the 20th century.

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