Dutch Justice Minister Dilan Yeşilgöz led a chorus of outrage Wednesday over a just-released report showing widespread lack of awareness from Dutch citizens about the Nazi atrocities of World War II against Jews, especially among Millennials and Gen Z.
The survey revealed that 23 percent of Millennials and Gen Z, and 12 percent of all respondents, believe the Holocaust is a myth or that the number of Jews killed have been largely exaggerated — a figure that was higher in the Netherlands than in any country previously surveyed and asked the same question by The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), which conducted the report.
“This is not only shocking, it is also very serious,” Yeşilgöz said according to the Het Patrool newspaper. “As a society we have a lot of work to do. And soon too.”
Among the survey’s findings, 53 percent of all Dutch respondents and 60 percent of Millennials and Gen Z surveyed “did not cite” the Netherlands as a country where the Holocaust took place. There were several transit camps in the Netherlands used to deport Jews to Nazi concentration camps, such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, but more than half (59 percent of all respondents and 71 percent of Millennials and Gen Z) could not name a single transit camp that was located in their country.
“This country is broken,” said Harm Beertema, a Dutch politician with the Party for Freedom.
