What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

Who were the victims?
123
better appreciation of the contexts in which Nazi
policies developed.
In line with data from the survey, the oldest
students interviewed were most likely to talk of six
million Jews being killed – although even here Jake
(Year 12, EE1) admitted, ‘I don’t know the exact
statistics’ and others in the same group spoke of
‘something like six million-ish’. Similarly, some older
students also over-estimated the total figures, with
a couple of students citing a figure of nine million.
Paradoxically, in one of these instances the student
also forwarded a rare estimate of the number of
children killed, putting this at one million.
Given how the figure of six million has become
totemic and a cultural shorthand for the fate of
the Jews under Nazism, the survey and interview
findings have a sensational quality. The overall
number of students of all ages who are seemingly
ignorant of the number of Jews killed during this
period is itself troubling, but what perhaps makes
for the most uncomfortable reading is the indication
that ignorance can still persist even after students
complete programmes of study. This poses serious
and pressing questions about what is being taught,
the way content is being delivered and the extent
to which students are developing core knowledge
of the most fundamental aspects of the Jewish
experience.
The discovery that a considerable proportion
of students do not know how many Jews were
killed helps to account for other findings of this
research project, some of which have been outlined
in this chapter. For example, one might justifiably
presume that, if a larger number were aware of the
scale of killing directed at the Jews of Europe, then
students might have more to say on how the Jewish
experience is to be understood in correlation with
other groups. This cuts both ways, of course: greater
knowledge and understanding of what happened
to each of the groups targeted by the Nazi regime
would in turn open up the space for greater insight
into overlap, intersection and particularities across
the victim groups. But, for such higher-order thinking,
core knowledge remains a prerequisite.
Scapegoating
This chapter has shown that students’ perceptions
of the distinctive aspects of the Jewish experience
are complicated and at times contradictory. On
the one hand, most students recognise that total
extermination of Jews became an intentional Nazi
strategy and many correctly know how many lives
this claimed. On the other hand, a significant number
believed that total extermination was pursued against
multiple victim groups and do not know, or are not
sure, how many Jews were killed in this process. So
the scope and scale of the destruction of European
Jewry are not necessarily regarded by students to
be distinct – let alone defining – characteristics of
the Jewish experience or of Nazi policy. This raises
the question of what exactly students see as being
particular or specific to the Jews.
An indicator was provided by responses to
question 57 of the survey. Presented with the
statement, ‘They were blamed by Hitler for
Germany’s defeat in the First World War’, students
were asked to indicate to which group(s) this applied.
The results are shown in Figure 5.7.
The majority of all students (64 per cent) correctly
indicated that the statement applied to the Jews.
Once the data was broken down by year groups, it
became evident that this finding was distinctly agerelated:
■■
in Year 7, 50.2 per cent of students answered
‘Jews’, with 23.4 per cent ‘Poles’ and 14.1 per
cent ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses’
■■
by Year 10, 69.7 per cent of students ascribed the
statement to ‘Jews’, 16.8 per cent to ‘Poles’, and
8 per cent to ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses’
■■
among Year 12 students these figures stood at
80.2 per cent, 13.4 per cent and 3.6 per cent,
respectively.
This data indicates that, over time, students become
more acquainted with one of the key indictments
made by Hitler and the Nazis against the Jews – that
of the Dolchstoss, or a ‘stab-in-the-back’, which
promulgators employed to account for the loss of the
Figure 5.7 Student responses to the statement,
‘They were blamed by Hitler for Germany’s defeat
in the First World War’ (survey question 57)
Percentage of students
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
Jews
Roma and Sinti
(Gypsies)
Victim groups
Poles
Jehovah’s
Witnesses
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