1 in 5 German youths unaware of 'Auschwitz'

London, Jan 26 (ANI): Over one-fifth of young Germans have no idea about Auschwitz, which was the most infamous Nazi extermination camp, a new study has revealed.

A survey carried out two days before Holocaust Memorial Day revealed that twenty one per cent of people aged between 18 and 30 had never heard about the death camp built by the Nazis in occupied Poland during World War Two.

And almost half of all those canvassed by the Forsa research institute said that they had never visited a concentration camp despite the fact Germany has made all of those on its soil permanent memorials to the dead, the Daily Mail reported.

The coming Friday is the 67th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army in 1945.

By the time Russian soldiers reached, around 1.2million of the six million victims of the Holocaust had been murdered there.

The survey, published in Stern magazine, also indicated that 95 percent of the people over 30 did know about Auschwitz and the crimes perpetrated there.

But less than 70 per cent could name the country it is situated in.

The murder of prisoners, majority of whom were Jews, started in 1941 when Nazi officials enacted Hitler's 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question'.

Most of the camps were equipped with gas chambers and several victims were then cremated as the Nazi's attempted to hide evidence of the Holocaust. (ANI)