Visitors tour an exhibition, ahead of Israel’s national Holocaust memorial day at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, in Jerusalem, April 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Yad Vashem, Israel’s national memorial to the Holocaust, on Thursday announced plans to establish its first educational center outside Israel in Germany, marking a significant expansion of its global outreach efforts to advance Holocaust education and address rising antisemitism worldwide.

Expected to open within three years, the new educational center will be located at Karolinenplatz in central Munich, aiming to broaden historical learning while serving as a hub for international dialogue and civic education across Europe.

According to the project team, Munich was chosen following a nationwide review and field research due to its central location, strong educational infrastructure, security requirements, regional partnerships, and historical significance as the birthplace of the Nazi Party.

With support from the German government, Yad Vashem said the site will serve as a “nationwide platform for audiences throughout Germany and neighboring countries.”

Yad Vashem also plans to establish an extension in Leipzig, a city in the eastern state of Saxony, featuring interactive learning spaces, while expanding its educational cooperation with North Rhine-Westphalia, one of Germany’s most populous western states.

Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan said this move comes “at a critical juncture, when the instrumentalization or denial of the Holocaust and antisemitism are on the rise,” citing growing global efforts to distort historical memory and understanding.

“As we move further from the era of living survivor testimony, historically grounded Holocaust education is more important than ever,” Dayan said in a statement. “The choice of Munich, the birthplace of the Nazi Party, carries deep symbolic significance and reflects the importance of confronting this history where it began.”

German Federal Education Minister Karin Prien welcomed the initiative, saying it would strengthen Holocaust education efforts and bolster initiatives to combat antisemitism across Germany and Europe.

“Knowledge of the past is essential to preventing such evil in the future,” Prien said in a statement, adding that many young people in Germany lack sufficient understanding of the Holocaust.

Already maintaining close ties with Germany, Yad Vashem operates under long-standing cooperation agreements with all 16 federal states, serving as a central memorial institution, hosting major exhibitions, and functioning as a research institute.

The number of living Holocaust survivors around the world fell from 220,000 to 196,600 over the course of 2025, according to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), a nonprofit organization that negotiates and secures compensation for survivors of the Nazis’ atrocities worldwide.

As the number of survivors steadily declines, so too does general knowledge of the Holocaust.

Earlier this year, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust released data showing the number of schools in the United Kingdom memorializing the Holocaust has fallen by nearly 60 percent since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, as such discussions have now been labeled “political” and “propaganda” by some pro-Palestinian advocates.

Last year, the Claims Conference released the results of an eight-country survey investigating Holocaust knowledge across the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Austria, Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Romania. The group found that 48 percent of those surveyed in the US could not name a single concentration camp used by the Nazi regime to imprison and murder Jews during World War II — including Auschwitz, the largest and most infamous of the Nazi camps. This figure fell to about 25 percent of those answering in the UK, France, and Romania. In Germany and Hungary, the level of ignorance reached 18 percent, while in Austria it hit 10 percent and in Poland it stood at 7 percent.

The same study found that many respondents did not know that the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews. The number of people who believed that 2 million or fewer Jews died reached 28 percent in Romania, 27 percent in Hungary, 24 percent in Poland, 20 percent in the UK, and 18 percent in Germany. In France, the US, and Austria, 21 percent of respondents expressed ignorance about the total death count.

A newer survey released by the Claims Conference in January asked 1,000 Irish adults about their views on the Holocaust, finding that half did not know the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews and that 19 percent of young people believed accounts of the mass slaughter had been “greatly exaggerated.” Among all respondents, 12 percent said they had never heard of the Holocaust, a number that increased to 15 percent for younger adults. Of all adults surveyed, 8 percent said they believed the Holocaust was a myth.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) also released research results last year which showed high levels of global confusion about the historical reality of the Holocaust.

According to the ADL’s findings, “20 percent of respondents worldwide have not heard about the Holocaust. Less than half (48 percent) recognize the Holocaust’s historical accuracy, which falls to 39 percent among 18- to 34-year-olds, highlighting a worrying demographic trend. Respondents younger than 35 also have elevated levels of antisemitic sentiments (50 percent), 13 percentage points higher than respondents over 50.”