A new survey of Italy’s young people shows them ignorant of recent history, including the Holocaust and Italy’s World war II experience.
The Rome daily II Messaggero, publishing the survey’s findings last Friday, called the results “alarming,” saying they indicated “a festival of ignorance.”
The survey was carried out by the Italian Federation of Psychologists as part of recent initiatives aimed at fighting racism.
About 1,000 young Italians between 16 and 24 were asked 30 questions relating to modern history, many of them concerning World War II and the Holocaust.
A total of 28 percent of the respondents thought that a “pogrom” was a Jewish holiday, according to results published in the Italian press. Nearly 12 percent thought it was a Jewish prayer. Only a little more than 4 percent knew what it really was — an organized, sometimes official persecution and massacre of a minority group — and nearly 56 percent did not reply.
More than 17 percent thought kristallnacht was nighttime military parade held by the Third Reich; nearly 14 percent thought it was the celebration of a political anniversary. Only 10 percent knew that it involved the mass persecution of Jews, and nearly 58 percent either did not know or did not respond.
Only a little more than 38 percent knew that there had been racist anti-Semitic laws in Italy during World War II. More than 24 percent said there had been no such laws, and the rest did not give an answer.
Fewer than 24 percent said they had a good knowledge of the history of Italy’s wartime resistance movement.
About half of the young people said they would like to know more about history. They put the blame for their lack of knowledge on schools and mass communication.
Tullia Zevi, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, along with other observers, put some of the fault on the Italian education system and on television programming.
But they were also critical of the young people themselves.
“It is our battle. We have to do it: to transmit the knowledge and the memory of these things so that they don’t happen again,” Zevi told the press.
“Unfortunately, we are beating our heads against the wall,” she said. “It is not just a problem of ignorance of facts, but of the behavior of young people. They have a total lack of civic education — that is, the teaching of tolerance, coexistence, a civil way of life.”
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