Worldly Europe

It seems as though Europeans are not as worldly as they thought. A recent poll taken by the BBC found that nearly half of all Britons did not recall what Auschwitz was.

LONDON (Reuters) - Nearly half of Britons in a poll said they had never heard of Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in southern Poland that became a symbol of the Holocaust and the attempted genocide of the Jews. The results of the survey conducted by the BBC were released on Thursday as Britain's public broadcaster announced it will show a new series next January to mark the 60th anniversary of the concentration camp's liberation. "We were amazed by the results of our audience research," said Laurence Rees, a producer on the series, "Auschwitz: The Nazis & the 'Final Solution."' "It's easy to presume that the horrors of Auschwitz are engrained in the nation's collective memory, but obviously this is not the case," Rees said. The survey found that 45 percent of those surveyed had not heard of Auschwitz. Historians estimate that anywhere from one million to three million people, about 90 percent of them Jews, were killed there. Among women and people younger than 35, 60 percent had never heard of Auschwitz, despite the recent popularity of films such as "Schindler's List," "Life is Beautiful" and "The Pianist," which depict the atrocities of the Holocaust.

This does help explain some of there recent actions. It certainly helps rationalize why they were so comfortable with Saddam have mass graves.

Update: I read a comment about this poll which had an interesting quote: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. - George Santayana (1863–1952), U.S. philosopher, poet