What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

2
Executive summary
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Many students reasoned that other groups also
were victims of the Holocaust – in particular these
included homosexuals, disabled people, and
Roma and Sinti (Gypsies). However, the vast
majority were unfamiliar with any of the specific
policies enacted against each group.
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Typically, students assumed all Nazi victims
were targeted and treated in similar ways, and
chiefly because they were ‘different’. Students’
explanations of difference took many forms but
often included religious intolerance and reference
to victims not being part of a ‘master race’.
Perpetrators and responsibility
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More than half (56.1 per cent) of younger students
(Years 7 to 9) appeared to believe the Holocaust
was solely attributable to Adolf Hitler. With age,
students increasingly appreciated that the Nazis
played a significant role in the Holocaust; however,
most students saw the Nazis as an elite group
loyal to Hitler rather than a political party that
enjoyed significant, broad-based support across
all sectors of the German population.
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Only a small number of students (fewer than
10 per cent) suggested that the German
people were complicit in, or responsible for,
the persecution and mass murder of Jews
and other victims groups.
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Very few students appeared to know about the
role played in the Holocaust by collaborating
regimes (such as the Vichy government),
Axis allies or local populations across Europe.​
Chronology and geography
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50.7 per cent of students that completed the
survey incorrectly believed that the largest number
of Jews murdered during the Holocaust came
from Germany and 54.9 per cent thought that
mass murder took place in Germany, not Poland.
For many students the Holocaust was seen
through a distinctively Hitler-centric and
German-centric lens.
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Many students did not have a secure or confident
chronological understanding of the Holocaust.
For example, only 7.4 per cent of students
correctly understood that the German invasion of
the Soviet Union in June 1941 was the event that
primarily triggered the ‘organised mass killing of
Jews’, with 40.2 per cent of students incorrectly
believing that mass killing began immediately after
Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor in January 1933.
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Most students had limited understanding of the
Holocaust and its relationship to the Second
World War. Only 24.3 per cent recognised the
term Einsatzgruppen, and knowledge of mass
killing in Eastern Europe during the war was also
very limited.
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Most students (71.0 per cent) recognised that
Auschwitz was explicitly connected to the
Holocaust, however very few students associated
camps like Treblinka (14.9 per cent) and
Bergen-Belsen (15.2 per cent) with it.
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Many students were uncertain about how and
why the Holocaust ended and only 46.1 per cent
correctly knew that the end of the Holocaust
came as a result of the Allied liberation of lands
occupied by the German army.
Britain and the Holocaust
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Students typically had a very limited and often
erroneous understanding of Britain’s role during
the Holocaust, with 34.4 per cent incorrectly
believing that the Holocaust triggered Britain’s
entry into war. A further 17.6 per cent of students
appeared to believe the British drew up rescue
plans to save the Jews, while 23.8 per cent
thought the British did not know about mass
killing until the end of the war.
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Collectively, students’ core conceptions of the
Holocaust appeared to closely reflect the wider
cultural and political representations of the
Holocaust which proliferate within contemporary
British society. It is notable therefore, that the
historically inaccurate, The Boy in the Striped
Pyjamas is, by a large margin, the most read
book and the most watched film (84.4 per cent
of those students who said they had seen a film
about the Holocaust).
Challenges and issues
The authors of this study do not interpret or present
these findings primarily as a criticism of students nor
their teachers. On the contrary, it is argued here that
such limitations in knowledge and understanding are
in part a consequence of the problematic manner in
which the Holocaust is often popularly and politically
framed. They may also derive from the complex
challenges of teaching about the Holocaust and from
a common over-emphasis on a simplistic ‘lessons
from’ approach. The results of this report, coupled
with the findings from the Centre’s 2009 study of
teaching practice (Pettigrew et al. 2009) – which itself
drew on responses from more than 2,000 teachers –
suggest that the Holocaust is a difficult and emotive
subject to teach. Accordingly, teachers need