FOUR IN TEN BRAZILIANS
DON'T KNOW
WHAT THE HOLOCAUST WAS.
A MUSEUM IS WORKING
TO CHANGE THAT
Laura Nicolli Kullock, Holocaust Museum in Curitiba
When the Holocaust Museum of Curitiba set out to measure what Brazilians actually know about the Holocaust, the results were sobering. Four in ten people surveyed said they had never heard of it, weren't sure what it was, or simply didn't know. In a country of almost 214 million people, that figure represents an enormous blind spot — one with real consequences for how societies recognize and resist hatred.
A LANDMARK NATIONAL SURVEY EXPOSES DEEP GAPS IN HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE — AND POINTS TO EDUCATION AS THE PATH FORWARD.
The survey, "Conhecimento sobre o Holocausto no Brasil" (Knowledge about the Holocaust in Brazil), was released by the Holocaust Museum of Curitiba alongside the Brazilian Israelite Confederation (CONIB), the Holocaust Memorial of São Paulo, and StandWithUs Brazil. Conducted by Instituto ISPO across 11 metropolitan regions between April and October 2025, it is the first study of its kind ever carried out in the country — gathering responses from 7,762 people.
The numbers are stark. Only 53.2% of respondents correctly identified the Holocaust as the systematic extermination of approximately six million Jews by Nazi Germany during World War II. Nearly a third — 31.1% — simply didn't know. Others described it as "a military conflict with 50 million victims," a "cultural movement," or an "isolated, unverified episode of violence." On Auschwitz, the largest concentration and extermination camp, the results were even more alarming: 61.6% of respondents either didn't know or gave a wrong answer when asked to identify it.
Among respondents with only a primary school education, just 27.2% correctly defined the Holocaust. Among those with graduate or university degrees, that figure jumped to 86.2% — a disparity that speaks less to individual failure than to deep structural inequalities in how history is taught across Brazil's educational system.
The country, however, has not been indifferent to Holocaust education on paper. In December 2017, Brazil’s National Education Council incorporated the study of the Holocaust into the Base Nacional Comum Curricular (BNCC) — the federal curriculum framework — making it a compulsory subject in the ninth grade of primary school. The initiative was spearheaded by CONIB, with the support of the Holocaust Museum of Curitiba. The move aligned Brazil with a United Nations resolution recommending that member states develop educational programs to carry the lessons of the Holocaust to future generations as a means of preventing future genocides.
In 2021, Brazil went a step further, being accepted by unanimous vote as an observer member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) — a political and moral commitment to advancing Holocaust education, research, and memory, reinforcing the principles established in the 2000 Stockholm Declaration. The membership was widely seen as a signal that Brazil's engagement with this history was becoming institutionalized, independent of any particular government.
That signal became complicated in 2025, when the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva withdrew Brazil from the IHRA — a decision that raised questions about the continuity of the country's commitments and threw a sharper light on the survey's findings. Making Holocaust education compulsory by curriculum decree is one thing. Building the educational culture to deliver it is another.
What the data reveals
Among those who said they had some knowledge of the Holocaust, schools emerged as the primary source, cited by 30.9% of respondents, ahead of films and books (18.6%) and the internet and social media (12.5%). And 64.4% of all participants said they believed Holocaust education should be a mandatory part of school curricula — specifically to prevent future episodes of hatred, violence, and discrimination.
But the infrastructure for deeper engagement is thin. Museums and memory institutions were cited as a source of Holocaust knowledge by only 1.7% of respondents, and 88.3% said they had never attended a lecture, event, or museum visit related to the subject. The knowledge that exists, the study concludes, is largely superficial, fragmented, and unequal.
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