Holocaust survivors are dying - and a horrifying new study shows we are breaking our promise to them

• A recent study highlights how little the average American knows about the Holocaust.
• The survivor generation is dying out and we are failing to adequately honor their memory.

We promised Holocaust survivors that we would never forget. We are breaking our promise.

Thursday is Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, and a recently released study paints a disturbing picture of the knowledge - or lack thereof - that Americans have about the Holocaust.

The specifics are horrifying:

• 66% of millennials did not know what Auschwitz was.
• 11% of US adults and 22% of millennials answered that they either hadn't heard or were not sure if they had heard of the Holocaust.
• 31% of adults and 41% of millennials believe - incorrectly - that 2 million Jews or fewer were killed during the Holocaust. The number that is most frequently cited is 6 million, but the actual number is almost certainly higher.
• Most disturbing to me though, was this: While 84% of adults knew the Holocaust happened in Germany, only 37% knew it occurred in Poland, only 6% knew it occurred in Latvia, and only 5% knew it occurred in Estonia and Lithuania.

This statistic, perhaps less shocking than others, is one that troubles me on a personal level. My grandmother, Masha Greenbaum, is a survivor. She was liberated from the concentration camp Bergen Belsen on April 15th, 1945. Bergen Belsen was in Germany, but Masha is from Lithuania, and that is where her Holocaust story began.

The reality is that many Lithuanians willingly partnered with their German counterparts to launch a ruthless slaughter of their Jewish citizens. The most glaring example of this can be found at Ponar, a place where an estimated 70,000 Jews were shot into a mass murder pit by the Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators. That was only one site. By the war's end, less than 10% of the pre-war Lithuanian Jewish community was still alive. 

If this is the reality, then we are failing the survivor generation. 

My grandmother dedicated her life to educating people about the Holocaust, and has written extensively about her experiences. But her generation is dying. And as it does, the torch of storytelling passes to the next. Some have taken it up more valiantly than others. 

A notable example is Rachel Kastner, a Barnard College senior studying political science and film studies. Kastner  recently produced "The Barn," a documentary about her grandfather Karl Schapiro, and the Christian woman who risked her life to save him from the Nazis. 

She told me that she is scared that "future generations might not be intimately familiar with or connected to these important stories," and that "as a filmmaker, I know that visual storytelling is a very powerful method to share stories."

I asked Kastner what motivated her to create the documentary. She told me that growing up, she was "surrounded by Holocaust survivors" and that she would hear them speak at school. At some point, she realized her experience was not the norm and wanted to do something to change it. 

Not everyone has the interest or ability to make a film. But the level of Holocaust education in this country - a country that fought in World War II - is deeply embarrassing.

Today would be a good day to start doing something about it.