One in five young Germans has no idea that Auschwitz was a Nazi death camp, a poll released Wednesday showed, ahead of Holocaust memorial day.
Although 90 percent of those asked did know it was a concentration camp, the poll for Thursday's edition of Stern news magazine revealed that Auschwitz meant nothing to 21 percent of 18-29 year olds.
And nearly a third of the 1,002 people questioned last Thursday and Friday for the poll were unaware that Auschwitz was in today's Poland.
The poll comes ahead of the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945, which Germany has marked since 1996 with official memorial ceremonies for Holocaust victims.
According to a report by independent experts commissioned by the Bundestag, the German federal parliament, and published earlier this week, about one in five Germans is latently anti-Semitic.
The study has found that anti-Jewish attitudes are manifested most strongly by adherents of the German extreme-right and radical Muslims living in Germany, but roughly 20 % of the German population overall displays latent anti-Semitism, according to the experts' findings.
The authors say that in Germany there still exists "the habit of anti-Semitic verbal outbursts and other everyday practices which have spread to the very center of society." They say these habits come from deeply rooted clichés about Jewishness or simple ignorance of the religion of Judaism. Anti-Semitic chants continue to be frequent among football fans.
The authors of the study say the internet is playing a significant role in spreading these destructive opinions in Germany and is accelerating their dissemination primarily among youth.
In comparison with other European countries, the degree to which anti-Semitism is widespread in Germany is about average, according to the authors of the study. Hungary, Poland and Portugal show extremely high manifestations of anti-Semitism, the report says.