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1 in 10 Americans Aren't Sure They've Heard Of, the Holocaust

NEW YORK CITY (CBS13) - A majority of Americans (58%) believe something like the Holocaust could happen again.

Thursday is Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day). The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) commissioned a national survey of Holocaust awareness. It found what it calls "critical gaps" in awareness of basic facts about the Holocaust.

One of the biggest surprises in the study - 11% of adults in the United States and 22% of Millennials haven't heard of, or aren't sure they have heard of, the Holocaust.

Some of the other key finding of the survey conducted by Schoen Consulting include:

-45% of Americans can not name a single concentration camp or ghetto. More than 40,000 existed.

-41% didn't know what Auschwitz was. 40% did correctly identify it as a concentration camp.

-70% of Americans say fewer people care about the Holocaust than they used to.

-31% believe 2 million or fewer Jews were killed during the Holocaust. 41% of Millennials hold this belief. Approximately 6 million Jews were actually killed between 1941 and 1945.

The Executive Vice President of the Claims Conference, Greg Schneider, said, "This study underscores the importance of Holocaust education in our schools."

Claims Conference did say there were some encouraging notes in the survey, including 93% of respondents saying students should learn about the Holocaust in school.

The survey also looked at the issue of Anti-semitism. 68% of those surveyed do believe there is Anti-semitism in the United States today. More than half (51%) said there are many or a great deal of Neo-Nazis in the U.S.

15% answered that people should be able to use Nazi slogans or symbols in the United States today.

Schoen Consulting sampled 1,350 American adults as part of the survey.

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