What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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Preface
often socially constructed, context-dependent
and complex. Numerous researchers have raised
awareness of the important relationship between
knowledge and understanding in the cognitive and
affective domain (Ashby and Lee 1987; Davis et al.
2001; Downey 1995; Foster 1999; Shemilt 1984;
Yeager et al. 1998).
So, at the simplest level, what and how students
learn about the Holocaust may be heavily influenced
by personal, emotional, empathetic and spiritual
responses to the narratives and stories encountered.
Furthermore, key scholarship has also revealed the
importance of students’ acquisition of historical
knowledge in relation to notions of historical
consciousness or historical frameworks (Howson
2007, 2009; Howson and Shemilt 2011; Lee 2004;
Lee and Howson 2009; Rüsen 1987, 1993, 2004;
Seixas 2004; Shemilt 2000). In this respect, we knew
that the use of survey-based ‘knowledge’ questions
(often multiple choice) and focused interviews
would never be able to address all the complexities
associated with uncovering every aspect of students’
historical knowledge and understanding of the
Holocaust. Nevertheless, with these considerations
in mind, student responses to both the survey and
during interview did provide unprecedented and rich
material from which important conclusions could
be reached.
2. Defining historical knowledge
The second issue worth emphasising is directly
related to those raised above. In the next three
chapters, an argument is made that it is vital for
students to be able to draw on certain historical
knowledge in order for them to understand the
Holocaust in meaningful ways.
For example, if students believe that the
Holocaust was fundamentally due to the desires
and actions of one man – Hitler – then they may
be unable to address critical broader issues of
individual and societal responsibility, agency and
choice. However, if students know more about
the actions of collaborators, perpetrators and
bystanders – and understand that individuals across
Europe were complicit in the Holocaust – then they
will be better equipped to consider its profound
implications and deeper significance. In this example,
historical knowledge is not detached knowledge
for knowledge’s sake. Rather, historical knowledge
allows and compels students to ask difficult
questions and address relevant and significant issues.
In a similar vein, if students have a robust
under standing of how the policy to persecute and
murder Jews changed and developed over time,
they may be better equipped to understand and
evaluate the ‘warning signs’ critical to understanding
how extremist actions in a society can take root and
develop. However, if students believe that mass killing
happened as soon as Hitler came into power, the
limitations of their historical knowledge will render
them unable to contemplate the relevance and
significance of the Holocaust for contemporary society.
Once again, therefore, the acquisition and
understanding of key historical knowledge empowers
students to raise and consider important issues,
while the absence of key knowledge makes such
endeavours impossible. As a result, in the following
chapters, attention is given to what students know
(and don’t know) and the impact this has on their
ability to understand and explain the Holocaust.
3. Determining fundamental historical
knowledge and understanding
These chapters are written with the full
acknowledgement that the Holocaust, as with any
subject of historical enquiry and research, is always
open to new and shifting interpretations. Indeed, the
Holocaust continues to be one of the world’s most
studied and debated historical phenomena and
so is understandably a subject that invites multiple
interpretations, vigorous debate and contested
argument. As new evidence and scholarship
emerges it is inevitable that the historical record will
be continually revised, revisited and reshaped. As a
result, it is not surprising that no fixed, shared and
agreed narrative of the Holocaust exists.
This, of course, provides the (history) teacher of
the Holocaust with an ongoing problem. In many
ways, history teachers in England have long been
comfortable with teaching a subject that is open to
interpretation and critical evaluation. Developments
in history teaching in the past four decades
have ensured that the subject is often taught as
an enquiry-based and evidence-led discipline.
Nevertheless, tension always remains in the history
classroom between, on the one hand, providing
students with a clear narrative and chronological
framework while, on the other, accepting that
interpretations of the Holocaust are fluid and dynamic.
As such the following chapters are written in
a way that respects these very real pedagogical
tensions. Where reference is made to historical
scholarship it is done in such a way that it
acknowledges that many issues are open to debate
and revision. However, the chapters take some
of the commonly agreed historical aspects of the
Holocaust, and compare and contrast these with
what students know and understand. For example,
while many students claim that Britain and the Allies
did not know about the Holocaust until the end of