Auschwitz
© Scott Barbour/Getty ImagesHigh-voltage fences surround the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Brzezinka, Poland
Holocaust revisionism is worst in some of the EU's eastern members, according to a new study that argues governments are seeking to minimize the role of some in their country in the mass killing of Jews.

"Many European Union governments are rehabilitating World War II collaborators and war criminals while minimising their own guilt in the attempted extermination of Jews," the Holocaust Revisionist Report, which was sponsored by Yale University, Grinnell College and the European Union of Progressive Judaism, concluded.

"Revisionism is worst in new Central European members - Poland, Hungary, Croatia and Lithuania," the study found.

The new report comes at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe. A Eurobarometer poll published this week has shown that half of EU respondents think that anti-Semitism is a problem in their country. And a study published last month found that nine out of 10 European Jews believe anti-Semitism has increased over the past five years.

The new report argues that some EU governments are contributing to an attempt to change the way the Holocaust is understood and remembered.

"The Hungarian government is minimising its country's participation in the genocide, rehabilitating war criminals, and introducing anti-Semitic writers into the national curriculum," the Holocaust Revisionist Report noted.

"When a Polish minister questions Polish participation in the murder of hundreds of their Jewish neighbours during a Holocaust-era programme, he is wrong," the report's authors wrote.

In Lithuania, critics say a faulty historical narrative has developed.

"The traditional nationalist narrative of Lithuania's wartime experience equates Nazi and Soviet occupations. Developed as a response to Soviet narratives, it considers Lithuanians as almost equal victims to Jews," the report noted, adding that "the myth claims good Lithuanians had nothing to do with the crimes of either regime and resisted at every opportunity."

In Croatia, the report points to the continued use of the salute of the wartime fascist Ustaลกa at football games, rallies, and protests, as well as the lack of Holocaust museums. The Jewish and Roma communities have boycotted official commemorations.

The revisionism report also points to problems in Italy, while praising countries like Romania, France and the Czech Republic for confronting their past.