23% of young Dutch have doubts that the Holocaust happened: study

Nearly a quarter (23 percent) of Netherlands residents born after 1980 think the Holocaust is “a myth” or that the number of Jewish people killed is grossly exaggerated. That is more than in other countries. One-third to over half of the generations born since 1980 know remarkably little about the persecution of the Jews and genocide in the Second World War.

That emerged from a study that The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, or the Claims Conference for short, held among 2,000 Netherlands residents in December last year. The international organization, which defends the rights of Holocaust survivors, previously conducted this research in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Austria, and Canada. The results were nowhere as “shocking” as in the Netherlands, said the Claims Conference. For the study, millennials from 1980 and members of Gen Z until 2012 were interviewed by telephone, as well as almost an equal number of older Netherlands residents.

54 percent of all respondents and 59 percent of younger people did not know that 6 million Jewish people died in the war. 37 percent of young people think 2 million or fewer Jews were killed. A majority of Netherlands residents (53 percent) also did not mention the Netherlands as one of the countries where the Holocaust happened in the Second World War. Many cannot name a single Dutch transit camp like Westerbork, Vught, or Amersfoort.

Almost everyone knew Anne Frank’s name, but 27 percent of the Netherlands residents did not know that she died in a concentration camp. The Claims Conference called these figures “alarming” also because 22 percent of respondents under 42 consider individual neo-Nazi statements acceptable. At the same time, the respondents think that neo-Nazism is much more common in the United States than in the Netherlands.

Over three-quarters of all respondents consider education about the Holocaust in schools important. This number is higher in the other countries studied. “After every study, we notice that knowledge bout the Holocaust is dwindling. Holocaust denial is downright disturbing. Education is crucial because otherwise denial will dominate knowledge, and future generations will learn nothing of what happened,” said Gideon Taylor, president of the Claims Conference. In the Netherlands, the Jewish Cultural Quarter, among others, is affiliated with the organization.

NIOD and Anne Frank Foundation response

It is “downright shocking” that some Dutch people believe the Holocaust did not happen or that the number of victims is greatly exaggerated. It is also worrying that a small group of respondents think that Anne Frank’s diary is a forgery, said Kees Ribbens of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies.

Ribbens finds it surprising that about one in six Netherlands residents think Anne Frank died in the Secret Annex and didn’t realize she was killed in a concentration camp. He called it staggering that about one in three respondents believes that non-Jewish Dutch people were subjected to the same extermination in World War II as their Jewish compatriots. That indicates a fundamental lack of knowledge. The results of the Claims Conference study provide food for thought, he said.

“A particularly serious concern,” according to Ribbens, is that a minority believes the Holocaust could happen again today in the Netherlands. “That requires careful study,” said Ribbens. “To what extent are deniers and doubters open to information from education and museums? Is it ignorance, disinterest, or wilful denial and distortion of historical facts?”

The Anne Frank Foundation also advocates the importance of Holocaust education. “It is imperative that young people learn about the Holocaust at school. How democracy and the rule of law were put out of action, people were excluded from society, deported, and murdered. Anne Frank’s life story contains all these elements,” said the foundation.