It is international Holocaust Remembrance Day.

But as the world recalls the horrors of the Hitler era, a new survey shows that a fifth of young Germans do not even know Auschwitz was a Nazi death camp.

A separate independent study commissioned by the German parliament suggests that anti-Semitism remains entrenched in the country. Twenty per cent of Germans, the report indicates, have at least a ‘latent’ hatred for Jews.

“Anti-semitism in our society is based on widespread prejudices, on deeply-rooted clichés or on simple ignorance about Jews and Judaism,” said history professor Peter Longerich.

It is 67 years today since the Red Army liberated Auschwitz in occupied Poland, the most notorious of the Nazi concentration camps. Six million Jews were killed in Hitler’s state-sponsored extermination campaign.

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