Parkland survivor David Hogg, Kathy Griffin join push to help Auschwitz Museum gain Twitter followers

Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg and comedian Kathy Griffin have joined other public figures in urging Twitter users to follow the account for the Auschwitz Museum.

{mosads}The site of the former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp tweeted last week about trying to reach 150,000 followers on the social media site by the end of the year.

Social media users began spreading the message to their own followers, including Griffin, Hogg and Malcolm Nance, a former intelligence expert in the U.S. Navy.

Done!

— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) December 26, 2018

“This should be MILLIONS of followers,” Nance wrote on Twitter.

This should be MILLIONS of followers. If you follow me. Follow @AuschwitzMuseum https://t.co/rKH3Zxzm71

— Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) December 26, 2018

Former cable news anchor Greta Van Susteren mentioned the Auschwitz Museum and the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., in a tweet last week.

“History is so very important … we must never forget,” she wrote.

I recommend you follow @AuschwitzMuseum – and @HolocaustMuseum …history is so very important…we must never forget https://t.co/eF4HbckQWZ

— Greta Van Susteren (@greta) December 20, 2018

The account had surpassed its original goal and reached more than 179,000 followers as of Thursday afternoon. 

Hogg, who is a survivor of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting that left 17 people dead in February, has become an outspoken gun control activist. He encouraged his followers to help the museum reach the 200,000 benchmark on Thursday.

Let’s get @AuschwitzMuseum to 200k.

If you follow me you should also follow @AuschwitzMuseum.

Please RT to spread the word. https://t.co/XJ1r6L7v6w

— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) December 27, 2018

The Auschwitz Museum also paid tribute to former longtime CBS News Anchor Dan Rather who encouraged his followers to follow the account earlier this month.

“I follow @AuschwitzMuseum on Twitter and my feed contains regular reminders of the horror of the Holocaust, shaking me from daily preoccupations to contend with heartbreaking but necessary truths,” Rather wrote. “I gently and respectfully suggest you try following as well.”

The account wrote that it is necessary to remember “this painful past to help us all think about our common responsibility for the world today and in the future.”

We must Never Forget. I follow @AuschwitzMuseum on Twitter and my feed contains regular reminders of the horror of the Holocaust, shaking me from daily preoccupations to contend with heartbreaking but necessary truths. I gently and respectfully suggest you try following as well. https://t.co/cWsyUU1sNi

— Dan Rather (@DanRather) December 9, 2018

The social media push follows a November poll which found that 1 in 3 Europeans said they knew nothing or very little about the Holocaust.

Another poll done this year showed that 70 percent of Americans surveyed believe that fewer people seem to care about the Holocaust as much as they used to.

That study, conducted by The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, found that 22 percent of polled millennials say they haven’t heard of or were not sure if they have heard of the Holocaust, compared to 11 percent for all U.S. adults.

Almost half of the millennials polled — 49 percent — and 45 percent of all U.S. adults were unable to identify one of more than 40,000 concentration camps or ghettos in Europe used by Nazi Germany.

While 41 percent of all U.S. adults were able to identify Auschwitz, two-thirds of millennials polled — 66 percent — could not identify the infamous death camp.