As we mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day this month, most of us assume that the main threat to Holocaust memory comes from fringe extremists claiming that the gas chambers never existed.
That danger is real, but the reality is more complex.
In the Anti-Defamation League’s 2024 Global 100 survey of antisemitic attitudes worldwide, only 4% of respondents in the 103 countries and territories polled indicated that they believed the Holocaust was a myth and didn’t happen.
While that’s four percent too many, here’s what should really alarm us on this day of remembrance: More than four times as many people surveyed (17%) believe the Holocaust happened, but that the number of Jews who were killed has been “greatly exaggerated by history.”
In other words, nearly 20% of the world’s total adult population is buying into the notion that there’s a need to question something that historians have already firmly established as fact.
Today, the dominant form of Holocaust falsehood isn’t denial: It’s distortion.
In the Middle East and North Africa, 33% of respondents say that the facts of the Holocaust have been exaggerated. In Asia, the rate is 18%. Even in the Americas, where many of us like to think we’ve learned from history, 15% of adults minimize the scale of the Nazi genocide. Eastern Europe is even worse, at 16%. Western Europe and Oceania, at 6% and 11%, respectively, look better by comparison – but “only” millions of people distorting the murder of six million Jews is hardly grounds for comfort.
Here’s what’s particularly troubling: Distortion often grows in the very places where people actually know something about the Holocaust. Respondents with higher levels of education are five percentage points more likely than those with less schooling to recognize that the established history is accurate (51% versus 46%).
Yet they are also more likely to insist that the extent of the killing has been exaggerated: 19% among the highly educated versus 15% among those with less education.
Education alone cannot preserve historical truth. When people learn the facts but reject their moral significance, knowledge turns into cynicism, leading to a worldview that acknowledges the Holocaust happened but insists that Jews exaggerate its scale to claim special-victim status.
Generational gap
The generational gap is also extremely concerning. Among respondents over the age of 50, some 60% accept the basic facts of the Holocaust. Among those under 35, that drops to 39%. Younger people are not only more likely to underestimate how many Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, but they are also far more likely never to have heard of the Holocaust at all.
When ignorance and minimization mix in a social media-dominated generation, we shouldn’t be surprised to see traditional antisemitism being utilized to justify and fuel extreme anti-Israel antisemitism. Phrases that invert the tragedies of the Holocaust, like “Israelis are today’s Nazis” or ”Israel is committing a modern Holocaust,” are treated as casual political commentary instead of the unacceptable bigotry they actually are.
Holocaust distortion doesn’t just rewrite the past; it delegitimizes Jewish concerns in the present. When people insist that the numbers have been exaggerated, they are actually making a broader moral claim: that Jews have exaggerated their suffering and that Jewish concerns about antisemitism today are inflated, too.
The logic flows seamlessly from “the Jews exaggerate what happened then” to “the Jews are lying about what is happening now.” It’s the fuel for lies denying the systematic sexual and other violence Hamas perpetrated in Israel on October 7, 2023.
Preventing distortion
So, what needs to happen to prevent Holocaust denial and distortion from spreading?
First, governments, tech companies, and educational institutions need to recognize Holocaust distortion – not just “old-school” denial – as a serious warning sign. Laws, social media policies, and school curricula that focus only on outright denial don’t go far enough. We must also treat attempts to minimize Holocaust casualty figures, relativize the Nazi genocide, or turn it into a generic atrocity as exactly what they are: antisemitism.
Second, we need to invest in education that connects facts to meaning. People need to know the facts and figures, yes, but they also need to understand what the Holocaust was about: the lethal consequences of conspiracy theories, dehumanizing propaganda, and the normalization of antisemitism across Europe long before the crematoria were built.
What’s more, Holocaust education must not just present the Holocaust as a fixed moment in history but as an example of what can happen when hate and conspiracies take hold in society and are allowed to run unchecked.
More robust education, not just about the Holocaust but about the nature of antisemitism itself, can go a long way toward helping today’s youth learn the lessons of the past.
Finally, we must be sure to acknowledge that the Jewish people have faced a unique tragedy in their history and have every right to mourn those lost without having accusations thrown in their faces.
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the question is not whether Jews talk about it too much. The question is whether the world talks about it enough and is willing to listen and learn; not only to remember the stories of the past but to acknowledge the antisemitism of the present, which has its roots in the same conspiracy theories that led to the Holocaust.
The fight to preserve Holocaust memory has entered a new phase. Distortion has become denial’s more palatable cousin: easier to spread, harder to call out, but just as dangerous. Especially on this day of remembrance, we must not allow it to become the new normal.■
Marina Rosenberg is senior vice president of International Affairs at the Anti-Defamation League.