According to a new CNN/Comres survey, only three generations after six million Jews, including one million children, were murdered in the Holocaust, a huge number of Europeans still hold nasty anti-Semitic views, including thinking Jews have control of business, finance, media, and politics around the world, and exaggerating the number of Jews in order to buttress their conspiratorial theories.
The poll surveyed over 1,000 respondents each in Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Poland and Sweden. Roughly two-thirds of the respondents in the survey wildly overestimated the number of Jews in the world. While Jews comprise roughly 0.2% of the world’s population, one-quarter of Hungarians and 20% of British and Polish respondents thought Jews comprised over 20% of the world’s population. As CNN noted, “Four out of ten respondents in the survey thought their own countries were between 3% and 10% Jewish. In fact, Israel is the only country in the world where more than 2% of the population is Jewish.”
Over 25% of Europeans thought Jews have too much influence in business and finance, while nearly as many believed Jews had an inordinate say in conflict and wars globally.
Moreover, one-third of Europeans said they knew little or nothing at all about the Holocaust. In France, roughly 20% of people between the ages of 18 and 34 never heard of the Holocaust. In Austria, that figure was 12%. Roughly 40% of Austrians claimed they knew “just a little” about the Holocaust, the highest percentage in all countries surveyed.
One-third of Europeans said Jews use the Holocaust to their advantage; one-third felt that supporters of Israel use accusations of anti-Semitism to counter criticism of Israel, and one-third said remembering the Holocaust distracted from current atrocities today. That last figure was strongest in Germany, Austria, Poland, and Hungary.
28% of respondents said their own country’s anti-Semitism was triggered by Israel; 18% said that it was because of Jews in their countries.
In Poland and Hungary, roughly 40% of respondents felt Jews have too much influence in business and finance globally; while one-third of Austrians and one-quarter of French and German respondents agreed, roughly 33% of Poles and Hungarians said Jews influenced political affairs too much, and over 25% of Poles and Hungarians said Jews influenced media too much.
As Community Security Trust, a charity that protects British Jews from anti-Semitism and related threats, reported in July 2018, anti-Semitism in the United Kingdom was the highest it had recorded since it began reporting in 1984, writing:
This report shows that the number of antisemitic hate incidents reported to CST in the UK fell by 8 per cent in the first six months of 2018 compared to the same period in 2017. However, the total of 727 antisemitic incidents recorded by CST in the first six months of 2018 was the second-highest total CST has ever recorded for the January to June period of any year. The highest ever total for this period was the 786 incidents recorded in the first half of 2017, which was the highest total CST has ever recorded for the January to June period and was part of a record annual total of 1,414 antisemitic incidents during the whole calendar year of 2017. CST has recorded antisemitic incidents since 1984.
The Guardian reported in 2014 of rising anti-Semitism in Europe:
In the space of just one week last month, according to Crif, the umbrella group for France’s Jewish organisations, eight synagogues were attacked. One, in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles, was firebombed by a 400-strong mob. A kosher supermarket and pharmacy were smashed and looted; the crowd’s chants and banners included “Death to Jews” and “Slit Jews’ throats”. That same weekend, in the Barbes neighbourhood of the capital, stone-throwing protesters burned Israeli flags: “Israhell”, read one banner.
In Germany last month, molotov cocktails were lobbed into the Bergische synagogue in Wuppertal – previously destroyed on Kristallnacht – and a Berlin imam, Abu Bilal Ismail, called on Allah to “destroy the Zionist Jews … Count them and kill them, to the very last one.” Bottles were thrown through the window of an antisemitism campaigner in Frankfurt; an elderly Jewish man was beaten up at a pro-Israel rally in Hamburg; an Orthodox Jewish teenager punched in the face in Berlin.
