AJC Survey Shows Swedes Highly Knowledgeable About Holocaust

American Jewish Committee
Monday, 24 January 2000

An overwhelming majority of Swedes favor keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive and making Holocaust education in their schools mandatory, according to a new American Jewish Committee survey.

"Sweden stands apart from other countries we have surveyed on knowledge about the Holocaust, and that is, in part, due to the Swedish government's own commitment to preserving memory," said David A. Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee.

"Knowledge and Remembrance of the Holocaust in Sweden" is the third in a new series of AJC national surveys dealing with Holocaust knowledge and remembrance in various countries. Surveys conducted in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia were released last fall.

The AJC survey of Sweden covers such broad themes as factual knowledge about the Holocaust, feelings about Holocaust remembrance, attitudes toward Jews and other minorities, and awareness of "Living History," the Swedish government's Holocaust education campaign.

AJC's Director of Research, David Singer, presented the survey results today at a news conference held at the Scandic Hotel Continental in Stockholm. Dr. Singer was joined by Ralph Grunewald, AJC's Assistant Executive Director for Policy and Program, and Lena Posner-Korosi, president of the Stockholm Jewish community.

The survey, released on the eve of an intergovernmental conference on Holocaust education hosted by the Swedish government, highlights the potential impact of government-supported curriculum.

The survey results indicate that "Living History," an information campaign organized two years ago by the Swedish government to promote knowledge and remembrance of the Holocaust, has reached a substantial portion of the Swedish population – and that it is having a positive impact.

Central to the campaign is the free distribution of the book Tell Ye Your Children to families requesting it from the government.

Forty-two percent of those surveyed said they are aware of the "Living History" campaign, and 16 percent said they have requested a copy of the book.

The survey results also show that those Swedes who have been brought into the orbit of the Living History campaign are more likely than other Swedes to display strong factual knowledge about the Holocaust.

Among the AJC survey's key findings on Holocaust remembrance and knowledge:

- 94 percent of Swedes feel that "we should keep the remembrance of the Nazi extermination of the Jews strong even after the passage of time," while 4 percent maintain that "50 years after the end of World War II it is time to put the memory of the Nazi extermination of the Jews behind us."
- 88 percent of respondents correctly identified Auschwitz, Dachau and Treblinka as concentration camps, and 82 percent knew the symbol Jews were forced to wear.
- 49 percent of Swedes chose "6 million" as the approximate number of Jews killed by the Nazis, the highest percentage of any country surveyed by the AJC.
- Ninety-four percent of Swedes said Holocaust education should be mandatory in Swedish schools, and 4 percent disagreed.
- Sixty percent of Swedes favor banning neo-Nazi groups active in Sweden today, while 22 percent opposed banning.
- Sixty-three percent of Swedes favor establishing a national Holocaust museum in Sweden, and 22 percent are opposed.

A highly positive picture emerges in terms of attitudes toward Jews in Sweden.

- Only 3 percent of Swedes believe that Jews "behave in a manner which provokes hostility in our country."
- Only 2 percent of Swedes think that Jews have "too much influence" in Sweden, 14 percent believe that "Jews exert too much influence on world events."
- While 66 percent of Swedes indicated it "wouldn't make any difference" if neighbors are Jews, 31 percent said they would "like to have" Jews as neighbors and 2 percent would "prefer not."
- Some 16 percent of Swedes "strongly agree" or "somewhat agree" that "Jews are exploiting the memory of the Nazi extermination of the Jews for their own purposes," while 76 percent "strongly disagree" or "somewhat disagree."

The survey was conducted for the American Jewish Committee by Sifo, a leading opinion-research organization based in Stockholm between December 13 and 16, 1999. The survey of 1,000 Swedes has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Between 1992 and 1996, the AJC carried out a series of public opinion surveys probing issues related to knowledge and remembrance of the Holocaust. The United States, Great Britain, France, Slovakia, Australia, Germany, Austria, Poland and Russia were included in that research effort.

For more information, or to contact American Jewish Committee, see their website at: www.ajc.org