85% of Americans concerned young people don’t know enough about Holocaust or learning lessons of how to confront evil, finds new poll. What can you do to teach your children?

April 28, 2014 By in Epicenter

MEME-HolocaustEducation(Jerusalem, Israel) —  “To misunderstand the nature and threat of evil is to risk being blindsided by it.” 

As readers of this blog know, this has been a theme of many of my books over the years. Yet recently we learned a fascinating piece of data. A surprisingly large majority of the U.S. population is concerned that Americans are not being taught enough about the Holocaust or learning how to confront evil in our time. They are especially concerned that young people aren’t being effectively taught what can happen when evil rises and we do not take decisive action to stop it.

These are among the findings of an exclusive new poll Tyndale House Publishers and I commissioned as we prepared to release The Auschwitz Escape. It seems particularly relevant to highlight such findings on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

McLaughlin & Associates, a nationally-respected polling firm, conducted the survey for us. We asked 1,000 likely U.S. voters the following question: “Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: ‘It has been almost 70 years since the end of World War II and the liberation of the Nazi death camps like Auschwitz, but I am concerned that Americans generally – and young people in particular – don’t know enough about the history and horrors of the Holocaust and aren’t learning the lessons of what can happen when evil rises and America does not take decisive action to stop it’?”

  • 85.3% agree
  • 13.0% disagree
  • 1.8% don’t know

Let us consider, therefore, how we can do a better job reaching all Americans — and especially young people – with the history and lessons of the Holocaust. After all, darkness is falling. We are facing rising evil all over the world and Americans are going to have to make hard choices very soon on how to deal with such evil.

One of the main reasons I wrote The Auschwitz Escape was to do my small part to educate myself, and my family, and others, about the horrors of the Holocaust, but also about some of the remarkable true stories of Jews and Christians who helped each other to fight the Nazis and rescue as many lives as possible.

Here are some ways you can teach your family, and others:

  • Consider giving the book as a gift to someone you want to know more about the Holocaust
  • Read the book as a family and discuss it together
  • Use the non-fiction resources — books and films — listed at the end of the book to discover more about the real stories that inspired the book
  • Start a book club and read/discuss this book to get a deeper conversation going
  • Visit the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington
  • Come to Israel and visit Yad Vashem
  • Start following the U.S. Holocaust Museum and Yad Vashem on Facebook and Twitter and share/re-Tweet what they publish to others.
  • Give to organizations that are caring for Holocaust survivors — The Joshua Fund is one such organization.

May God bless you as you do your part to learn the lessons of the Holocaust, share those lessons with others (especially young people), and take direct and specific actions to care for Holocaust survivors, as well as those who are suffering other global traumas, including genocide.

>> Learn more about the true stories of four remarkable heroes that really did escape the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in the spring of 1994 to tell the world the truth about what Hitler was doing to the Jewish people.

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