What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

Who were the victims?
121
Scale
Further indications of an evolving programme
of continental genocide can be found in the
development of Nazi policy towards Jewish children.
The resolve to mark both adults and children for
death first emerged in early August 1941.
Following the invasion of the Soviet Union on
6 June 1941 the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing
squads), together with other SS and police units,
had principally focused on killing adult males. This
was in accordance with the regime’s instructions that
all would-be political opponents and partisans be
eliminated, and reflected its conviction of a synergy
between Jews and Communism. However, Browning
(2004: 260) suggests that ‘the last taboo – the killing
of women and children – eroded’ very quickly, partly
as local populations made no distinctions in their
pogroms (Arad 2009: 88).
In an excellent example of policy developing
organically as broad central directives were
implemented in varying local contexts, by mid August
1941 ‘units and formations of various types’ were
increasingly including children in mass shootings
(Longerich 2010: 250). Just over two years later in
October 1943, Himmler gave a speech to leading
Nazi officials where he outlined the rationale for
this radicalisation: ‘The question came to us: what
happens with the women and children?’, the SS
leader explained, and so as to avoid creating
‘avengers’, ‘the difficult decision had to be made,
to let this entire people disappear from the earth’
(Wittmann 2008: 563–4). By May 1945, around
90 per cent of Jewish children (around 1.5 million
previously living in pre-war Europe) had been killed.
In order to determine students’ awareness
of the measures taken against Jewish children,
respondents to the survey were asked,
‘Approximately what percentage of Jewish children
living in Nazi controlled Europe were murdered?’
The results for each year group are presented in
Figure 5.5.
These statistical results indicate that 15.9 per
cent of all students answered the question correctly,
with this becoming less likely as they got older.
Conversely, most students tended to incorrectly think
that either 50 per cent or 75 per cent of children
were murdered, with the latter figure becoming the
more popular response as students got older. These
results must be handled with some care: the nature
of statistical ‘facts’ like ‘what percentage were
murdered’ is such that students may simply not have
come across the right percentage in the course of
their studies. Indeed, many students couched their
response by indicating some degree of uncertainty
to their answer.
However, the results do highlight that students are
generally unfamiliar with the policy of murder pursued
against Jewish children. This speaks to student
knowledge of the scale of genocide more generally.
Today, it is widely accepted by governments,
authorities, and the academic community that,
by 1945, around six million Jewish men, women
and children had died. This figure is calculated via
various sources, including the size of the pre- and
post-war Jewish population in Europe as well
as documentation compiled by the perpetrators
themselves.
To determine the extent of student knowledge on
this matter, the survey asked, ‘Approximately how
Figure 5.5 Student responses to survey question 48, ‘Approximately what percentage of Jewish children
living in Nazi controlled Europe were murdered?’ (percentage by year group)
Percentage of students
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
About 1% About 10% About 25% About 75% About 90%
■ Year 7 ■ Year 8 ■ Year 9 ■ Year 10 ■ Year 11 ■ Year 12 ■ Year 13
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