believing that “we can learn lessons for today from what happened in the Holocaust” and two-thirds (66%) believing it should be compulsory for schools to teach about the Holocaust in schools.
Crucially, higher levels of Holocaust awareness were associated with warmer feelings towards Jewish people and other minorities, asylum seekers, and First Nations peoples, providing strong evidence for supporting initiatives that advance Holocaust awareness and knowledge. As Dr. Frieze put it, “Caring about the Holocaust means that you’re more likely to care about other issues as well.”
The Gandel Survey’s findings pointed to two of the most effective ways of increasing Holocaust knowledge and awareness in Australia: specific education about the Holocaust in schools and visits to Holocaust museums.
Although only a quarter of the Australian population had visited a Holocaust museum or center, doing so meant that they were about 50% more likely to have excellent Holocaust knowledge.
“When people visited a museum or learned about the Holocaust in school they not only knew much more and cared much more,” Steven Cooke underlined, “but these experiences also shaped the way they viewed the world. The work ahead of us is understanding the relationship between education and potential changes in thinking and behaviors, as well as figuring out how to increase that number of people.”
With 79% of those who had learned about the Holocaust at school agreeing that these lessons had had a lasting impact on them, it is likely that current initiatives to strengthen these programs and institutions will have an effect well into the future.
Researchers stressed that policymakers and leaders in civil society should see the Gandel Survey as the starting point for activity. They made eight recommendations based on their analysis of the findings:
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More information about the researchers’ recommendations and the Gandel Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness in Australia Survey’s findings can be found here.