A new national survey about Canadians’ knowledge of the Holocaust – commissioned to mark the 70th anniversary of Germany’s infamous 1938 “Kristallnacht” anti-Jewish riots – shows strong general awareness of the Second World War-era genocide but notable knowledge gaps among younger and less-educated Canadians, as well as some francophone’s.
The telephone poll of 1,500 Canadians, conducted in October for the Montreal-based Association for Canadian Studies, showed seven per cent of all respondents had never heard of the Holocaust.
Thirteen per cent of those between the ages of 18 and 24 said they didn’t know what the Holocaust was, and nearly one-quarter of respondents with only elementary-level education – 23 per cent – had never heard of it.
Meanwhile, about 12 per cent of francophone’s reported no knowledge of the Holocaust compared with about four per cent of English-speaking respondents.
