http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s ... _auschwitz

Forty-five percent of the 4,000 people questioned for the survey by BBC Two said they had never heard of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, the television channel said Thursday.






45%???? WTF?

that's just pathetic.....how could they not know about it!?!?!?

I gaurantee you 90% of Americans know about... and it's not even in our country!

Well I hadn't either, until the word camp was after it. I'm not surprised though that 45% didn't know. Let's poll the U.S. to see how many people know what year it was when terrorists attacked the Twin Towers....

You're kidding, right?


I'd be shocked if it were greater than 50%...


But if it were under 50%, I'd be shocked also. Either way, this is depressing.

What are you talking about, there were no terrorists in TTT. :?

What are you talking about? Now I'm confused...

me too, lol

What does TTT stand for?

the twin towers....aka world trade center.....

Oh, now I get it! It stands for a popular movie. {I think that's where he was going..}

It's this smilie that gets me every time: :? It also looks so mad and disgusted, I forget it's a joke...

ANYWAY, going back on topic...

Forty-five percent of the 4,000 people questioned for the survey by BBC Two said they had never heard of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, the television channel said Thursday.

I dunno, maybe they know it under the name Oświęcim? When I moved to America I didn't know what Auschwitz was either, but I sure knew what Oświęcim was.

The British? Why would they know it under the Polish name rather than the English variation?

Anyways, there's a chance the poll is misleading:

1) they could've asked kids as well, and kids are not likely to know it as well as adults

2) They could have asked for Auschwitz/Birkenau instead of just Auschwitz, which could've confused some

I dunno, I was just grasping for straws.

It's hard for me to see why so many people don't know about this stuff, but there are things I don't know, that the British would be bewildered by my not knowing.

The world is full of facts, and full of names...

...what is important is the act, and not the names. It's rather selfish that we expect people to remember all this useless trivia when most of you couldn't really tell in what countries, around this world, right now, people are dying of mass geonocide and the like.

So show me a question written like "Do you know what happened at the Concentration Camps in Germany during the second World War?" and that 50% still comes up blank, then I'll agree we're in a bit of trouble.

Exactly.

@Chip Munkey, well its not in their country either...unless you're assuming "Europe" is a country.

@Boxie...well its kind of like what Micasey said. It because the word "camp" wasn't after it. Actually, if you ran a poll here and just said "Auschwitz-Birkenau" probably that many wouldn't know it either. In school, WWII/Holocaust was discussed in vague generalities because of the shock factor a bit. The details, such as proper nouns, were often passed over in order to make it a bit more general. Jews went to "Concentration Camps" more than breakdown of names. That's part of the set-back to dealing with the bigger issues of how mechanized this particular genocide was. People don't deal with the technology and processes that went into it nearly so much as they should, and its because of stuff like this.

If you just said "Birkenau" I can assure you the poll would even be up at about 90% (Auschwitz is still much more recognizable of a name). There is 0 understanding of it, especially no realization it was the female camp.

Except the association between Auschitz and concentration camp has been stressed to such an extent that they are virtually synonymous. For the most part, Auschwitz IS concentration camp. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Auschwitz is a better term to refer to the Nazi death camps than the term 'concentration camp' because concentration camps have their origins in the US in the 1800s, where they were used to hold prisoners forced to perform labour.

When I was in Munich a few years ago, I visited the Dachau concentration camp which is open to tours. It was a morbid and dark thing to see, but really made an impression on me. It was a lot different to stand there where it all happened, then to read about it or see it on film.

If memory serves me correctly, Dachau was one of the biggest camps (around 200,000 were sent there), and I bet you'd get a lot lower poll number of those familiar with Dachau than those with Auschwitz.

Btw, if anyone is uncomfortable with that image, I'll take it down.


Incidentally, I've seen a similar image, but from Rwanda.

Yeah but the total at Auschwitz-Birkenau neared 1,500,000.

The most shocking thing about those camps is the stunningly beautiful landscape they're set in. I mean, it is such a contrast with the ugliness of what occurred in those camps.

That's true. My only point is that under normal circumstances, a place where 200,000 people were wrongly imprisoned, and 30,000 put to death would be a place that everyone knew about.

It gets hard to keep all the names straight in one's head.

Especially when you get to be my age. They should really limit the number of tragedies for us elderly people so that we can keep better track. I think one tragedy per decade should be all that is allowed. That would make things much more simpler. I'm writing my congressman with this idea...