What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

Who were the victims?
109
Typical here was Charlotte, who admitted she
‘didn’t know’ if she was ‘right’ in thinking Black
people were targeted but reasoned that because
‘he [Hitler] wanted everyone to be white’ this meant
Black people were ‘sent to the concentration
camps along with Muslims’ (Year 8, LON5). The
tendency of students to resort to logic and inference
or assumption and reasoning rather than to secure
knowledge and understanding was not exclusive to
student description of Black people’s experience; it
was a hallmark of focus-group discussion around
all the victims of Nazism.
Analysis of responses to the question ‘Who
were the victims of the Holocaust?’ are at once
illuminating and potentially deceiving. The trend
towards an inclusive understanding of victimhood as
students get older is indisputable. It suggests that
their conceptions are malleable and developmental;
that they come to understand ‘the Holocaust’ as
involving a general and universal approach to victims
rather than one that is specific to an individual group.
What makes this problematic and deceptive is less to
do with how far this notion is valid or justified (though
that is important) than the extent to which the
conception rests on undeveloped, even non-existent,
historical knowledge and understanding. Put
differently, do students come to see ‘the Holocaust’
as a holistic experience on the basis of what they
know, or as a result of what they infer or presume?
What do students think happened to
non-Jewish victim groups, and why?
Focus-group interviews reinforced the survey
responses showing that homosexuals, disabled
people, and Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) were the
three principal non-Jewish victim groups in students’
consciousness. When students were asked during
interview to identify groups targeted by the regime,
Jews were named across the age range, with
homosexuals and disabled people referred to in
virtually every instance. Mention was also made of
the Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) – though less often
by younger students than their older peers – while
sporadic, often isolated references to Black people,
Jehovah’s Witnesses, Communists, Slavs and Poles
were made by students aged between 11 and 16.
Some, but not all, of these groups appeared in
discussion with students aged 16 to 18 – although,
interestingly, Slavs were referred to in a number of
separate interviews with this older age group. These
older students were also the only ones to list Soviet
(or Russian) Prisoners of War as victims of Nazism.
In response to these trends and also due to the
confines of this report, the following discussion of
non-Jewish victim groups referred to by students
focuses solely on homosexuals, disabled people
and the Roma and Sinti (Gypsies). This is neither to
ignore nor overlook the position that other groups
have in the consciousness of some students
(indeed, where possible, mention will be made of
these). Rather, the issues raised around students’
knowledge and understanding of the experiences of
these three victim groups opens up extensive space
for discussing them below.
It is important to be clear that the ability of
students to correctly refer to a victim group at
interview did not necessarily mean they were
familiar with the experience of that group. On many
occasions students would name a victim group
but, when invited to expand further on the fate of
these people, they would either struggle to do so,
concede they ‘didn’t know’ or could not remember,
or imply that everyone had the same experience.
Paradoxically, this practice did not tend to prevent
students from offering explanations and accounts for
why groups were targeted.
Figure 5.2 Student responses to the statement,
‘The Nazis planned to kill every last person from
this group, wherever they could reach them’
(survey question 54)
Percentage of students
Homosexuals
As a preface to the section of the questionnaire that
examined knowledge and understanding of victim
experience (survey questions 54 to 67), students
were told that ‘The Nazis persecuted (or unfairly
treated) a number of different groups of people’.
A series of statements were then presented (survey
questions 54 to 57), and students were asked to
indicate the group(s) to whom they believed each
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
Jews
Disabled
people
Victim groups
Homosexuals Roma and
Sinti (Gypsies)
www.ioe.ac.uk/holocaust