What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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Encountering representations of the Holocaust 97 ■■ A desire to learn more about the Holocaust was reported by 68.6 per cent of the students who completed the survey. This figure increased to 70.3 per cent among those who reported having already learned about the Holocaust. Taken alongside the students’ comments at interview, this indicates a common appetite to learn more about the subject, with limited evidence of socalled ‘Holocaust fatigue’. ■■ There was broad consensus about the importance of the subject, as 83 per cent of respondents thought that all students should learn about the Holocaust while at school, suggesting their support for its mandated place within the curriculum. These findings were supported by focus-group participants, who often spoke of a sense of duty and obligation to know about this past. ■■ In survey responses, students prioritised antiracist and commemorative reasons for learning about the Holocaust and a commitment to preventing anything similar over more historical rationales, although both received a high degree of support. This balance was similar in focus groups, and in some cases students expressed their commitment to ensuring that ‘the concept’ of the Holocaust – that is, what it had come to represent – was understood and remembered over and above accurate or detailed knowledge of the historical events. However, many students also identified and articulated potential challenges to the notion that there are clear or simple ‘lessons from’ the Holocaust that can easily be learned. ■■ Those students who had been given the opportunity to hear a first-hand account from a Holocaust survivor strongly valued the experience; both the survey findings and the focus groups revealed what a powerful and engaging encounter this proved for most students. Many reported that meeting a survivor made the Holocaust feel ‘more real’. They spoke enthusiastically of the powerful personal, emotive and affective responses experienced when meeting and listening to survivor accounts. Arguably, this suggests how ‘unreal’ or phantasmagorical the subject may seem to those who encounter the subject only through texts and films – indeed, some students described their previous perspective in terms of ‘disbelief’, ‘unreality’ or like ‘something out of a story book’. ■■ Students spoke of taking a great deal from being in the company of a survivor, with many expressing how they found this an edifying as well as an affective experience. Many spoke convincingly of how the intimacy would perhaps be hard to reproduce through technological representation. ■■ Students also regularly reported being upset by hearing survivor testimony. However, this was described as an appropriate experience – one that allowed students to believe they had gained a personal understanding or emotional connection to the history. There was no sense that students avoided being upset and, instead, they actively sought such a personal, emotional response to the experience of the survivor. Weissmann (2004) has argued that such feelings are not necessarily equivalent – nor directly related to – meaningful comprehension of the historical events, but some students reported that survivor testimony had given them greater insight into the textures of everyday life at the time and of Jewish life before and after the war. ■■ The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is, by a large margin, both the most read book and the most watched film about the Holocaust. Of the 43.0 per cent of students who reported reading books about the Holocaust, 74.8 per cent had read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, considerably more than even the perennially popular Diary of Anne Frank, which 59.1 per cent had read. This picture was even more pronounced among the 76.2 per cent of students who had watched films or TV programmes about the Holocaust, of whom 84.4 per cent reported watching The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. It has now eclipsed Schindler’s List as the predominant mainstream media representation of the Holocaust. ■■ Focus-group interviews revealed that the clear majority of students position the film as a work of historical fiction and most students demonstrated enough awareness of the reality of life in a Nazi concentration camp to realise that the film was based on a historically implausible narrative. However, despite this awareness, students still regularly drew on the film as if it provided them with an unproblematic window on to the past. ■■ Notably, the film appears to be reinforcing a perspective of widespread German ignorance of the Holocaust. Moreover, in their discussions, many students showed a marked tendency to shift their locus of concern from the victims of the Holocaust onto the bystanders and even, to some extent, to the perpetrators. www.ioe.ac.uk/holocaust
98 Encountering representations of the Holocaust ■■ Many young people are viewing atrocity images of the Holocaust even when they are not shown them in school. Those who took part in focusgroup interviews generally valued them as part of their attempt to make both affective and cognitive sense of the Holocaust. ■■ Young people spoke of how the images of atrocity made the Holocaust ‘more real’ to them – a similar response to their experience of survivor testimony. Even where students found the imagery upsetting, they felt this was an appropriate response to the nature of the events and not something they should be shielded from.
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CENTRE FOR HOLOCAUST EDUCATION What
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What do students know and understan
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iv About the UCL Centre for Holocau
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vi Foreword by Sir Peter Bazalgette
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viii Foreword by Professor Yehuda B
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2 Executive summary ■■ Many stu
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Olivia Hemingway, 2014
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8 Introduction ■■ What forms of
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10 Introduction the fate of the Jew
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12 Introduction two reasons here in
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14 Introduction Figure 1.1 Variatio
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16 Introduction Holocaust are never
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18 Introduction ■■ the inclusio
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20 Introduction ■■ The chapter
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24 Methodology Of particular note w
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26 Methodology were asked questions
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28 Methodology Vocabulary test We e
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30 Methodology Table 2.2 Breakdown
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32 Methodology Focus group details
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34 Methodology How were the focus-g
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38 Collective conceptions of the Ho
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172 When and where did the Holocaus
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204 Considerations and recommendati
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Appendix 1: The Survey 225 Appendix
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Appendix 1: The Survey 227 How do y
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Appendix 1: The Survey 229 Word qui
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Appendix 1: The Survey 231 Explorin
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Appendix 1: The Survey 233 Do you r
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Appendix 1: The Survey 235 42. Who
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Appendix 1: The Survey 237 The Nazi
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Appendix 1: The Survey 239 64. What
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Appendix 1: The Survey 241 71. If y
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Appendix 1: The Survey 243 Returnin
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Appendix 1: The Survey 245 87. Have
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Appendix 2: Attitudinal scales used
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Appendix 3: Coding frameworks for f
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Appendix 3: Coding frameworks for f
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Appendix 4: Schools that participat
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Appendix 5: Schools that participat
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Appendix 6: Multiple regression ana
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References 259 Assmann, A. (2010)
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References 261 Carr, E.H. (1964) Wh
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References 263 Emler, N. and Ohana,
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References 265 Howitt, D. and Crame
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References 267 Levstik, L.S. (2000)
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References 269 Resnick, L.B. (1989)
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References 271 Snyder, T. (2009)
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References 273 Yeager, E., Anderson
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Centre for Holocaust Education UCL
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What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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