Nearly half of Canadians can’t name a single concentration camp: survey

A recently released survey reveals nearly half of Canadian respondents can’t name a single concentration camp from the Holocaust.

Schoen Consulting conducted the survey on 1,100 Canadians on behalf of the Azrieli Foundation, and it was published ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Sunday, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the largest concentration camp.

It follows a similar survey in the U.S. done in April 2018 by the same organizations.

The survey found 49 per cent of Canadian respondents could not name a single concentration camp out of the over 40,000 that existed, similar to the result in the U.S., which was 45 per cent.

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Other findings included 54 per cent of Canadians did not know six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust and 57 per cent of Canadians say fewer people seem to care about the Holocaust than they used to.

Forty-five per cent said they agreed with the statement, “The Holocaust could happen again.”

Canadian millennials’ knowledge of the Holocaust fared worse.

The survey found 52 per cent of Canadian millennials surveyed could not name one concentration camp or ghetto, while 22 per cent of millennials did not hear or were not sure they had heard of the Holocaust and 62 per cent did not know six million Jews died in the Holocaust.

Thirty-two per cent of Canadians surveyed thought Canada had an “open immigration policy” during the Holocaust, when in reality Canada only let in 5,000 Jewish refugees, one of the worst records of any democracy at the time.

On the upside, 82 per cent said all Canadian students should learn about the Holocaust and 85 per cent said it is important to keep teaching the Holocaust so it doesn’t happen again.

The survey was conducted in September via phone and online in both French and English, and the respondents were chosen at random to represent Canada’s demographics. There is a margin of error of plus or minus three per cent.