A conversation about the Holocaust knowledge gap with young Americans

Hey all, I saw that there was a post or two discussing the YouGov and the Economist poll that reported that 20% of Zoomers/young millennials believe that the Holocaust was a myth, with over 20% believing that it was exaggerated. This was, I'd argue, part of a larger trend related to a Holocaust knowledge gap. This gap, in my view, has been growing over the last couple of years. It began in 2018 with the now-pretty-infamous poll reported by the Washington Post that two-thirds of young people (Gen Z and millennials) didn't know what Auschwitz was. Okay, fair enough; Auschwitz is infamous, but it's relatively specific. But then in 2020, NBC News reported that almost the same number didn't know that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.

This was something I discussed with my friend J.D. Huitt of the History Underground YouTube channel back in 2020. Because he's a public school history teacher as well as a content creator, this kind of thing really matters to him as well and we both speculated that this kind of thing--that is, Holocaust skepticism/revisionism--would become increasingly common thanks to the lack of high quality knowledge out there. And sure enough, the data--at least as a correlation--bears that out. So we sat down to have a conversation about that on my show and I figured you all would find it interesting.

I'd love to see your thoughts on this. We discussed education, of course, but also the proliferation of easily digestible social media (i.e. TikTok), a dwindling cultural relevance (like in cinema) of the Holocaust, and ideological possession in the wake of October 7th. I'm sure there's more to it, so please share your ideas, rebuttals, and expansions.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-holocaust-knowledge-gap-w-the-history-underground/id1450885141?i=1000646594551