1 in 3 Europeans know little or nothing about the Holocaust, poll shows

A disturbing new study from CNN suggests that Holocaust awareness in Europe is far less prevalent than one would hope.

The CNN/ComRes poll spoke to 7,092 people across seven European countries: Great Britain, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Sweden, and Austria. It found that a third of those surveyed said they either knew "just a little" or nothing at all about the Holocaust. One in 20 of those surveyed had never heard of it. Specifically among French people aged 18 to 34, one in five said they had never heard of the Holocaust, and 12 percent of young people said the same in Austria, where Adolf Hitler was born. Half of European respondents overall said they know a "fair amount" about the genocide that killed millions of Jews, while one in five said they know a "great deal" about it.

This study just focused on seven European countries, but the situation isn't much better in the United States, as CNN points out that a recent survey found that one in five American millennials weren't sure they had heard of the Holocaust, and half of them couldn't name a concentration camp.

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The rest of this new study's findings are equally unsettling, with more than a quarter of respondents saying Jewish people have too much influence in business and finance, and 18 percent saying anti-Semitism is a response to "the everyday behavior of Jewish people." Additionally, one third of Europeans said that commemorating the Holocaust "distracts from other atrocities today."

The poll was conducted by speaking to 7,092 adults online from Sept. 7-20. Read the full findings at CNN.