Only 60% of Jewish Israelis feel that the Holocaust was a unique event and not another chapter in a series of acts of genocide that have taken place globally over the course of history, a poll by the Viterbi Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research at the Israel Democracy Institute revealed ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day, marked on Thursday.
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The Israeli Voice Index noted that this was a decrease from 2019 when 75.5% of Israelis said they believe that the Holocaust was a unique historical event.
A segmentation of the results according to respondents' religious affiliation showed that 79% of ultra-Orthodox Israelis agreed that the Holocaust was a unique event, compared to 63% of national religious, 66% of observant, 64% of traditional, and 49% of secular Israelis, who said the same.
Gauging the issue by political affiliation, the poll found that 38% of Israelis who identified as leftists believe the Shoah was a unique event in world history, compared to 52% of centrists and 68% of rightists.
Further segmentation of the results found that 68.5% of Sephardi Israelis see the Holocaust as a unique historical event, compared to 58% of Ashkenazi Israelis, 57% of mixed Sephardi-Ashkenazi Israelis and 43% of former Soviet-Union immigrants.
The poll further found that the majority of Israeli Jews – 81% - stand during the traditional, one-minute memorial siren that sounds on the morning of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Some 60% said they watch the special telecasts of the day's events on Israel's major news channels, while 33% actively participate in commemoration events for those who perished in the Nazi atrocities of World War II.
A segmentation of the data shows that less than 30% of Haredi Israelis stand during the siren – the most common act of commemoration. Some 61% of Haredim do not participate in any form of commemoration, while only 5% of seculars do the same.
The poll further found that most Jewish Israelis – 71% - have not visited the Nazi death camps in Europe.
Among those who have, 16% did so on a high school trip. About 36% of Israelis ages 18-44 and 21% ages 44 and over did so independently.
The poll was conducted on April 24-25, among a sample of 605 participants ages 18 and over. The maximum sampling error was 3.59%.
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