Dutch teachers report surge in Holocaust disinformation from TikTok and AI

History and social studies teachers at secondary schools across the Netherlands are regularly confronted in class with disinformation about the Holocaust that students reportedly encounter on TikTok and through artificial intelligence-generated images, according to a survey by NOS Stories that reached nearly all secondary schools in the country.

A total of 190 teachers who teach about the Holocaust completed the questionnaire. Of those, 111 history and social studies teachers — the majority — reported being confronted with such disinformation.

At a secondary school in Elburg, history teacher Maarten Post said students showed him a TikTok video claiming that during World War II, not six million Jews were murdered, but 271,000. He was then asked whether this was correct. He hears this kind of question regularly.

“They no longer know what is real and what is fake because of AI and TikTok, but I am very glad that they come to me with those questions," Post said. "Then, as a teacher, you can explain it and engage in conversation. It is very important not to condemn it, because such questions are genuine.”

Most teachers surveyed said they are satisfied with the way students follow lessons about the Holocaust. But one-third described their students’ prior knowledge as inadequate. Students usually know that the persecution of Jews took place but often lack further details. Four in 10 teachers said some students downplay the seriousness of the Holocaust.

Federica Russo, a professor of philosophy and ethics at Utrecht University, said she is concerned about the rise of disinformation across various platforms. She recently completed a European study on fake news and deepfakes on social media. It showed that many adults have difficulty distinguishing what is real from what is fake.

“If an influencer in your network spreads a news video, people no longer pay much attention to what the source of the video is and how reliable it is,” Russo told NOS. “Older generations lived before the arrival of social media and the internet. They can make a clearer distinction between what is reliable journalistic media and what is not. For younger generations, this distinction has disappeared because they did not grow up with traditional media.”

At a secondary school in Warnsveld, history and social studies teacher Gijs Korenblik showed students and colleagues two photographs of the Auschwitz extermination camp and asked which one was AI-generated, NOS reported. More than half chose the wrong photo.

The fake image, created with AI software, showed Jewish people arriving at Auschwitz being calmly led from the train. In reality, the arrivals were met with much aggression, and men were immediately separated from women—details absent from the AI-generated photo.

Korenblik said students have brought disinformation to him only a few times. But he sees so many AI-generated “historical” images lately that he fears for the future. “I do worry. AI is a kind of new catalyst. How are you going to deal with it? Schools and teachers are struggling with it,” he told the newspaper.

The Dutch Ministry of Education called the rapid spread of disinformation on social media concerning. “That is precisely why it is so important that pupils learn not only what happened, but also how they themselves can distinguish facts from untruths,” the ministry said.

Schools can use the Expertise Point for Digital Literacy to help with this. Starting this year, an additional 750,000 euros is available for Holocaust education so that schools can organize activities, such as museum visits with students.