Learning about the Holocaust

February 19, 2025

On January 27, 2025 ceremonies will be held in several countries to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. With each passing anniversary there are fewer persons alive that bore witness to the murder of six million Jews (representing more than one-third of the World’s Jewish population) and countless others. Holocaust survivor testimonies serve as crucial reminders of the atrocities committed by the Nazis and their collaborators. Surveys conducted in May 2024 by Leger Marketing for the Association for Canadian Studies reveal that nearly one in five Canadians between the ages of 18 and 24 think that the Holocaust is exaggerated and that an increasing percentage of Canadians are able to identify six million Jews as the number that were murdered during the Holocaust As educators and others face the challenge of moving from lived memories to learned ones in knowledge transmission about the Holocaust what information sources will become prevalent and what might this imply for the importance of stemming the rise in distortion and disinformation about the Holocaust as there are ever fewer witnesses? The survey results shared here seek to provide insight into these critical questions