Most Remember; Some Begin to Deny

FROM WASHINGTON TO WARSAW TO JERUSALEM, commemorations of the Holocaust took many shapes. In the U.S. capital President Clinton, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel and 8,000 guests -- including a few hundred who were spared in the death camps -- listened as survivor Elie Wiesel dedicated a Holocaust Memorial Museum. In Poland Vice President Al Gore honored the memory of resistance fighters killed in the Warsaw Uprising 50 years ago last week. Jerusalem received a most unexpected visitor: Martin Bormann, son of the Hitler aide of the same name, came to pay tribute at that city's Holocaust memorial. There were discordant notes as well. In Washington Wiesel and others were outraged at the presence of Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, who had claimed in a 1988 book that the number of Holocaust deaths is widely exaggerated. Most shockingly, one in five American adults (see the chart) said in a survey they were unconvinced that the Holocaust had ever occurred.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: From a U.S. survey of 992 adults and 506 high school students taken for the American Jewish Committee by the Roper Organization. Sampling error is plus or minus 4% and plus or minus 5% for adults and students respectively

CAPTION: WHAT HOLOCAUST?