A new survey from NOS Stories, released on May 6th, has uncovered a disturbing trend in Dutch schools: the rapid erosion of historical reality in the classroom—thanks to social media disinformation.
Over 190 secondary school teachers reported that students are increasingly arriving to class with “conclusions” drawn from TikTok and AI-generated content that minimizes or denies the Holocaust.
The findings highlight a specific, viral disinformation campaign claiming only 271,000 Jews were killed during the Nazi era—a figure that represents a massive minimization of the established historical fact that six million Jews (two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population) were murdered.
As Dutch educators struggle to bridge the gap between ‘viral fake’ and historical fact, the report indicates a crisis that has gone global, putting pressure on European memorial institutions.
