More than 2.6 million British people think the Holocaust is a myth, a poll has found.

Five per cent of UK adults do not believe millions of Jews were systematically murdered by the Nazis, according to the survey, which survivors and anti-racism campaigners said pointed to a “terribly worrying” level of denial.

A further 8 per cent of the British public claims the scale of the genocide has been exaggerated, according to research released to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day.

“Such widespread ignorance and even denial is shocking,” said Olivia Marks-Woldman, chief executive of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT), which commissioned the poll.

Six million Jewish people were murdered by Germany’s Nazi regime during the Second World War as part of Adolf Hitler’s campaign of extermination.

Remembering the Holocaust Show all 16 1 /16 Remembering the Holocaust Remembering the Holocaust 80,000 shoes line a display case in Auschwitz I. The shoes of those who had been sent to their deaths were transported back to Germany for use of the Third Reich Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Barracks for prisoners in the vast Auschwitz II (Birkenau) camp. Here slept as many as four per bunk, translating to around one thousand people per barracks. The barracks were never heated in winter, so the living space of inmates would have been the same temperature as outside. Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Sign for the Auschwitz Museum on the snowy streets of Oswiecim, Poland Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust The Gateway to hell: The Nazi proclamation that work will set you free, displayed on the entrance gate of Auschwitz I Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust A disused watchtower, surveying a stark tree-lined street through Auschwitz I concentration camp Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Stolen property of the Jews: Numerous spectacles, removed from the possession of their owners when they were selected to die in the gas chambers of Auschwitz Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust A sign bearing a skull and crossbones barks an order to a person to stop beside the once-electrified fences which reinforced the Auschwitz I camp Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust The peace and the evil: Flower tributes line a section of wall which was used for individual and group executions Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Life behind bars: Nazi traps set to hold the Third Reich’s ‘enemies’. In Auschwitz’s years of operation, there were around three hundred successful escapes. A common punishment for an escape attempt was death by starvation Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Burying the evidence: Remains of one of the several Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust The three-way railway track at the entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. This was the first sight the new camp arrivals saw upon completion of their journey. Just beside the tracks, husbands and wives, sons and daughters and brothers and sisters were torn from each other. Most never saw their relatives again Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust A group of visitors move through the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Viewed from the main entrance watchtower of Auschwitz-Birkenau Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust "The Final Solution": The scale of the extermination efforts of the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau can be seen by comparing the scale of the two figures at the far left of the image to the size of the figure to the left of the railway tracks' three point split Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Each cattle car would transport up to one hundred people, who could come from all over Europe, sometimes from as far away as Norway or Greece. Typically, people would have been loaded onto the trucks with around three days food supply. The journey to Auschwitz could sometimes take three weeks. Hannah Bills

Almost two-thirds of the British public either grossly underestimate that figure or have no idea how many had died, the survey found

One in five said fewer than two million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, while 45 per cent said they did not know.

“I find these figures terribly worrying,” said Steven Frank, a Dutch Jewish survivor of the Holocaust who was forced into a concentration camp at the age of seven following the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands.

He added: “If we ignore the past, I fear history will repeat itself.”

Mr Frank, whose father was gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, speaks to school pupils about his experience of Nazi persecution and said he had encountered Holocaust deniers at talks.

“In my experience, people don’t have a solid understanding of what happened during the Holocaust and that’s one of the reasons I am so committed to sharing what happened to me,” he said. “The only way to fight this kind of denial and antisemitism is with the truth.”

Seventy-three per cent of UK adults believe more should be done to educate people about the Holocaust, according to the HMDT’s poll of 2,006 people.

Ms Marks-Woldman said: “The Holocaust threatened the fabric of civilisation and has implications for us all.

“Without a basic understanding of this recent history, we are in danger of failing to learn where a lack of respect for difference and hostility to others can ultimately lead.

“With a rise in reported hate crime in the UK and ongoing international conflicts with a risk of genocide, our world can feel fragile and vulnerable. We cannot be complacent.”

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More than 100 antisemitic incidents are recorded in Britain every month, according to the Community Security Trust. The organisation, which monitors anti-Jewish hate crime, warned last year that bigots were becoming “more confident to express their views”.

The European Jewish Congress this week voiced alarm about the resurgence of antisemitism, urging political leaders to “prepare for the upcoming battle against extremism that is infecting our continent again”.