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One in five young Americans think Holocaust is myth, survey says
BALTIMORE, Md. – A 92-year-old Jewish Holocaust survivor has called for America’s schools and colleges to teach the truth about the horror of World War II Nazi death camps so that “it will never happen again.”
“At a time when so many young people are confused and questioning whether the Holocaust actually happened, our schools need to be teaching them the historical truth about the Nazi’s horrific systematic extermination of the Jewish people,” said Jochen “Jack” Wurfl, who recounts his experiences in his just-released autobiography “My Two Lives.”
Growing disbelief in the Holocaust is “unfathomable,” said Wurfl, who lost most of his family in Nazi concentration camps.
According to a recent survey by The Economist, one in five young Americans think the Holocaust is a myth.
The majority of U.S. states — 31 of them — do not require the Holocaust to be included in the public school curriculum.
Arkansas, though, passed a law in 2022 that requires schools to teach students about the Holocaust.
Anti-Jewish protests have exploded on U.S. college campuses since Israel responded with force to last October’s deadly attack by Hamas terrorists.
It’s evidence that “the antisemitic spirit of Nazi Germany is making an alarming resurgence, even here in America,” Wurfl said.
Generally, Americans’ knowledge of the Holocaust is weak — and young people, especially, do not understand the atrocities that the Jewish people have suffered, Wurfl said.
Fewer than half can correctly answer multiple-choice questions about the Holocaust, according to pollsters Pew Research.
Anti-Jewish Hostility Spreads
Meanwhile, hostility against Jews is spreading around the world, Pew Research reports.
In 2020, Jews were targets of either restrictions or hostility in 41 countries in Europe, 18 countries in the Middle East-North Africa region, 16 countries in the Americas, 16 Asia-Pacific nations, and three in sub-Saharan Africa.
Wurfl, who hid his Jewish roots to escape being sent to a Nazi concentration camp during the war, recalls the “terrible genocide” that claimed the lives of 6 million Jews.
“I noticed our Jewish neighbors disappearing,” he said. “One day, they lived next door or down the street — and the next day they were gone.”
Wurfl and his brother, Peter, saw their Jewish mother being whisked away from their home by the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police. She died in the Auschwitz death camp and their father, a prisoner at another camp, died just after he was liberated by U.S. forces at the end of the war.
Wurfl and his brother had to join the Hitler Youth and salute Der Fuhrer on parade to avoid being identified as Jewish.
America: Life Number Two
After the war, Wurfl moved to the U.S. — what he describes as his “second life.”
After becoming a U.S. citizen and serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, Wurfl founded Diversified Insurance Industries that he built into one of the nation’s largest and most successful insurance agencies.
Wurfl has known celebrities like actress Hedy Lamarr, played golf with the first U.S. astronaut, Alan Shepard, and tennis with Maria Sharapova — among many stories recounted in “My Two Lives,” co-authored by Bill Tamulonis and Diane Lonsdale.
Wurfl married former Miss El Salvador, Zonia Nusen, a marriage that spanned 63 years until her death in 2018, and the couple had three children.
Photo Cutline: Jochen “Jack” Wurfl, a 92-year-old Holocaust Survivor, speaks out about the importance of educating U.S. students about Hitler’s antisemitic genocide in his new book, “My Two Lives” – so that “it will never happen again.”
Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates
