About half of young Americans can’t name a single Holocaust site, repeating a pattern of ignorance seen in postwar Germany

A 2025 survey by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany found that 48% of Americans aged 18-29 could not name a single concentration or death camp. Additionally, 53% of surveyed Americans encountered Holocaust denial or distortion on social media. This ignorance echoes a pattern seen in postwar Germany, where two antisemitic incidents in 1959-60 and 1977 revealed significant gaps in students' Holocaust knowledge. These past events led to educational reforms, with new guidelines issued in West Germany in 1960 and 1962, instructing federal states to examine and revise how Nazism and the Holocaust were depicted in school textbooks. For example, the "Kletts geschichtliches Unterrichtswerk Ausgabe B" textbook's subsection on "Terror and Crimes" tripled in size between 1959 and 1960, including the estimated 6 million Jewish victims.