Two-thirds of German young people do not understand the word Holocaust, a new survey suggests. Four out of five questioned had heard of Auschwitz but 59 per cent did not know what happened on Kristallnacht, the Nazi-organised night of violence against Jews in 1933.
The survey of 350 randomly-selected German teenagers was conducted nationally for the University of Bielefeld and has an error margin of 3 per cent.
"This is very significant because it shows that much more has to be done in schools to educate young people about this time," said Prof Dieter Walz of Emnid, the institute that conducted the survey.
A parallel survey conducted in France showed that teenagers there were similarly ignorant of the Holocaust, even more so than their German peers.
The results come as Germany's battle against neo-Nazism enters cyberspace. An Internet website with the address www.heil-hitler.de was banned on Tuesday by the Justice Minister, the latest action by the federal government against extreme-right violence in Germany.
Neo-Nazis have been long suspected of using the Internet to distribute extreme-right hate propaganda but this is the first time the government has intervened.
Many Germans have already been blocking potential neo-Nazi sites through a process known as cybersquatting. Mr Christian Witt registered the website address www.nsdap.de (the initials of the Nazi Party) to prevent any group registering it and using it to spread neo-Nazi propaganda. "It's a simple way to prevent this type of thing and I prefer it to the idea of government control," he said.
Federal and state officials are meeting in Berlin today to discuss the possible banning of the extreme-right National Democratic Party (NPD). The federal Interior Ministry called the meeting after sustained pressure from Bavaria's Christian Social Union (CSU) government. The CSU say the NPD promotes neo-Nazism and is a threat to German democracy.
But many politicians and legal experts have argued that a ban could simply push the party underground or that an attempt, if unsuccessful, would give the party a clean bill of health.
Every day brings news of more suspected extreme-right attacks around the country. Earlier this week police discovered a bomb outside the home of a Jewish family in the southern German town of Bamberg. The bomb was set to detonate when one of the family members left the house, but it failed to detonate and police were able to remove it safely.
Yesterday it emerged that a teacher in the state of Thuringia was dismissed after he failed to stop his pupils calling out Nazi slogans and making the Hitler salute while on a school trip.
