David Singer
The American Jewish Committee, USA

The focus of my presentation is going to be a public opinion survey in the Czech Republic, which was sponsored by the American Jewish Committee. I would urge you to look at the questions in the survey, and to think through the implications for yourself. I also would just like to mention four publications that I have brought with me to Prague. First of all, there is the Czech curriculum study, conducted by Leo Pavlat for the American Jewish Committee. It is called The Jewish Theme in Czech Schools. It is available in a Czech version, and in an English version. In addition to that, there is a fine essay prepared for us by a young American scholar, James E. Young, called The Changing Shape of Holocaust Memory, which deals with the way in which the holocaust is commemorated in different countries and the different approaches that are taken to it. Finally, the document called Knowledge and Remembrance of the Holocaust in Different Countries will prove of interest to some people because it provides, in summary form, the findings from the American Jewish Committee-sponsored surveys on knowledge and remembrance of the holocaust in a wide number of countries. So, I am going briefly to touch on some comparative material.

I would like to make it clear that in carrying out this survey, the American Jewish Committee had a very specific purpose in mind. This is, in fact, the purpose we have brought to the surveys on knowledge and remembrance of the holocaust that we have now conducted in a broad range of countries - that it is one thing to talk about holocaust education and holocaust remembrance in the abstract, and it is another matter to deal with it in specific, concrete terms. If you are interested in developing an educational program, it is obviously important to have a solid foundation in terms of what is it that people do know, do not know and might want to know. So, it was with that purpose that at the beginning of 1992 the American Jewish Committee began this series of public opinion surveys. We have conducted two of them in the United States, one in Great Britain, one in France, two in Germany, one in Austria. Further afield, we did one in Australia, we did one in Russia, and I am happy to say that finally - in the context of this conference on the holocaust phenomenon - we have brought this research enterprise to the Czech Republic. I want to acknowledge the presence here of Dr Jan Herzmann, the director of Sofres-Factum, the opinion research organization that carried out the survey for us - and it was done in a wonderfully professional way. I would also add in parentheses - although I do not have this data as yet - that at this very moment we are conducting a virtually identical survey in Slovakia, so we will have some interesting comparisons there. We have plans to conduct such a survey in Switzerland and in Argentina. We will have a wealth of comparative data because there are a basic core of questions that we are repeating in country after country.

A number of general points emerged, and I am going to summarize some of the key findings here. Point number one - a point that is clear from the whole battery of surveys we have carried out - is that there cannot be one holocaust education. It is clear that there is no such thing as "the right way to conduct holocaust education - and nothing else makes sense". When you look in a comparative way at the survey results, it is clear that holocaust memory, and the whole issue of knowledge and remembrance of the holocaust, takes very different forms depending on the country. The issues are different, the levels of knowledge are different, the interest in holocaust remembrance is different. And, clearly, developing a serious educational program means tooling an educational program that is focused on the specific realities.

For instance, in the United States, virtually all Americans feel that holocaust remembrance is something that is appropriate: it is strongly endorsed, it is clearly seen as something desirable. On the other hand, Americans - because of their general lack of knowledge about history, including American history - are, regrettably, very poorly informed about even basic factual elements related to the holocaust. We now have the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in place, and it is going to be interesting to see what kind of change has taken place. But that is one model. Another example is the survey we conducted in Russia, where people knew tremendous amounts about the Second World War - this was the Great War against fascism. On the other hand, the knowledge level was very, very poor in terms of any basic information related to Jewish dimensions of the holocaust. This was something that was simply set aside in the Russian school and propaganda system.

So, on our basic knowledge questions, in a country like Russia the knowledge level is very low. Another example is a country like Poland, where the desire for holocaust memory is very strong, and factual knowledge about the holocaust is very strong. On the other hand, however, it is clear that for many Poles the holocaust means something quite different than what it means to Jews, because in the survey that we conducted a majority of Poles viewed Polish suffering during the war as the central dimension of the holocaust. The Jewish dimension was, in fact, seen as something secondary. So, you will have a broad range of facts.

Secondly, and this is reflected in our survey as well, you cannot separate issues of knowledge and remembrance of the holocaust from current attitudes towards Jews and other minorities (and I am going to have some things to say about that, especially about the terrible attitudes found in this survey in terms of attitudes toward Roma). It is clear that these issues are tied together. Probably the best example would be the whole phenomenon of "holocaust denial". Holocaust denial does not exist as an idea that is out there in society. It is not some kind of an intellectual enterprise in which people engage in the abstract. Holocaust denial exists pure and simple as a form of anti-Semitism. It is promoted by anti-Semites. Here, you have the total conflation of holocaust issues, holocaust remembrance and the issues of anti-Semitism. The whole point of holocaust denial is to rehabilitate the Nazis, and what better way to rehabilitate them than to say the whole thing never happened: it is a lie and, of course, we know who made up that lie - it is the Jews conspiring again. So again: you have to look at attitudes toward Jews and minorities in the society.

Finally, surveys do not interpret themselves. If looked at in terms of numbers - Is that number high? Is that number low? Are you happy with the findings? Are you disappointed with the findings? - to some degree, it certainly has to do with expectations. If your expectations are fulfilled, you tend to see it one way; if your expectations are not fulfilled, you see something differently. You can look at issues in a comparative framework and get some idea there, but you also have to bring some criterion of judgement about. Speaking on behalf of the American Jewish Committee, our position is as simple as possible: we expect 100 per cent knowledge about the holocaust. In other words, if I find that 99 per cent of people know, then I am interested in that 1 per cent that does not know - and I want to make it my business to make sure that they do know. If you view something as important and certainly as basic as this subject, then I think that one has to come with such expectations.

Let me now talk about the results in summary form, just to give you some sense of the survey that was done. There were 32 separate items. The survey deals with factual knowledge about the holocaust, and it deals with the issue of feelings about holocaust remembrance - Is that something important? Is that something people care about? The third area is attitudes toward Jews and other minorities, and here the data with regard to the Roma are very, very depressing. Finally, there is the awareness of the Czech Jewish experience.

There were close to 1,200 respondents in a representative national sample of the Czech population of 15 years of age and older, and the data is very, very fresh. The survey was completed on September 3. I do not think I could bring you any fresher data than that. Well, I myself have not had much of an opportunity to look at the data in detail, but you can break down the data by gender, by age, by education, income, region and political orientation. All these elements come into play.

Permit me now to move into this summary fashion: the key findings.

A substantial majority of Czechs favor keeping the memory of the holocaust alive: 74 per cent of Czechs feel that "we should keep the remembrance of the Nazi extermination of the Jews strong even after the passage of time", as against 17 per cent who maintain that "50 years after the end of the Second World War it is time to put the memory of the Nazi extermination of the Jews behind us". So, 74:17 people strongly favor keeping the memory of the holocaust alive. Along similar lines, but at a lower level, 67 per cent of Czechs think it either "essential" (22 per cent) or "very important" (45 per cent) that "Czechs should know about and understand the Nazi extermination of the Jews", while 27 per cent see this knowledge as "only somewhat important" (23 per cent) or "not important" (4 per cent).

Furthermore - and, on a practical level, I think this is a very encouraging finding - 57 per cent of Czechs answered "yes" when we asked: "Should teaching about the Nazi extermination of the Jews during the Second World War be required in Czech schools?" Certainly, for those advocating an educational program in this country, there is a strong endorsement from a predominant part of the population. In contrast, 30 per cent say "no" and 14 per cent say they "do not know".

Czechs have strong factual knowledge about basic aspects of the holocaust, but are far less knowledgeable about other aspects. We asked a number of basic knowledge questions in a number of countries. Thus, in response to an open-ended question, 92 per cent of Czechs were able to correctly identify Auschwitz, Dachau and Treblinka as concentration camps. We asked people: "what were these things?" - we did not give them choices - and 92 per cent answered the question correctly. Then, when we asked again in an open-ended fashion what was the symbol that Jews were forced to wear on their clothing during the Second World War 67 per cent answered "yellow star", "Jewish star", or "star of David", variants that indicated that they knew what the question was getting at.

At the same time, when we asked in a multiple-choice format about the approximate number of Jews killed by the Nazis during the Second World War, only 31 per cent of Czechs were able to answer "6 million". Forty per cent chose much lower figures than the correct answer of 6 million, and 20 per cent answered that they "don't know". In that respect, when you look at it in a comparative framework, the Czechs are clearly at the low end of the scale. Finally - and this is always difficult to interpret, at least in a country like the Czech Republic - we asked people if they know what the term "the holocaust" refers to. Of course, if you ask this question in the United States, or Great Britain, those who "know" know, and those who don't simply aren't aware of the phenomenon. On the other hand, in a country like Russia, when we asked this question, a very, very large percentage had simply never heard the terms, but that was because the word "holocaust" is an English term and it is not used there.

In the case of the Czech Republic, when we asked this question, 56 per cent of the respondents either gave an inappropriate answer - they offered an answer, but it had nothing to do with the holocaust as the term is used (38 per cent) or indicated "don't know" (18 per cent). So, again, these are mixed results, but some of it may be simply the linguistic aspect of the term.

Happily, "holocaust denial" has little impact among Czechs, with the vast majority of Czechs affirming the fact that the holocaust did happen. When we asked people the following question, "Some people claimed that the Nazi extermination of the Jews never happened. Have you ever heard this claim, or not? Simply, are you aware of the phenomenon of holocaust denial?," 73 per cent of Czech respondents said they had never heard this claim, which is obviously in its own way a very, very positive kind of finding, and 25 per cent said they were aware of this claim. When we then asked them directly, "Does it seem possible to you that the Nazi extermination of the Jews never happened, or do you feel certain that it happened?", 92 per cent of Czechs said they feel certain that it happened, 3 per cent said it seems possible that it never happened, and another 5 per cent answered "don't know".

This is again a practical matter of considerable sensitivity: a large majority of Czechs support some form of property restitution to Jews in the context of the holocaust. We asked a question that referred to property the Jews were deprived of during the Second World War, and there were three options. One option was to say "nothing should be returned to the Jews", which was what was chosen by 18 per cent of the respondents. The returning of all property to Jews - that is, individual and communal property - is favored by 36 per cent of Czechs, and another 35 per cent support returning buildings that serve religious purposes. So a majority support that.

In terms of attitudes towards Jews, it is a mixed picture. But it is clear that Czechs are basically neutral in their feelings about Jews. The percentage of Czechs who claim personally to know someone who is Jewish is only 34 per cent - this is one of the tragic legacies of the holocaust. The feelings are largely neutral when it comes to having Jews as neighbors. Seventy per cent say it does not matter one way or the other. When we asked about Jews having influence in Czech society, only 8 per cent said that Jews had too much influence. On the other hand, when we asked the question "Are Jews exploiting the memory of the holocaust for their own purposes?", more than one-quarter of respondents agreed. As to the statement, "Now, as in the past, Jews have too much influence on world events", again, more than one-quarter of respondents agree.

But the really frightening findings in this survey relate to the Roma. Let me just show these figures to you. We had a question about different neighbors. A full 81 per cent of the respondents said they prefer not to have Gypsies as neighbors against 17 per cent who said they don't want to live near Jews. We asked another question about a list of groups - "Which groups behave in a way that provokes hostility towards them in society?" Seventy-six per cent of the respondents said that "Gypsies behave in a way that provokes hostility towards them". This is in contrast to Jews: 4 per cent think that Jews behave in a way that provokes hostility. On the list, we also threw in "skinheads. I never thought it would have any meaning but, amazingly, the figure for skinheads was only 78 per cent. So, statistically speaking, there is zero difference between people who think Roma behave in a way that provokes hostility and people who think that skinheads behave in a way that provokes hostility.

Finally, to show you how current attitudes impact on attitudes of a more historic nature, we made reference to institutions that try to preserve documents dealing with Roma history and culture. "Do you think these are good things?" And we had an even split with 46 per cent saying "yes, these are needed", and 44 per cent saying "they are not needed".

I don't mean this at all officiously but, whatever problems a Jew may have in the Czech Republic, it is child's play as compared with the situation of the Roma. If you are looking for an inter-group relations agenda, here you have it.

Back