What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

Who were the victims?
127
Germany was like broke and stuff
(Deena, Year 9, LON6).
This underlying sense of there being a lot of Jews
and of Jews ‘being to blame’ pointed to a linking of
causal factors, but in a manner that lacked criticality.
The combination of presumption and speculation
was seen elsewhere, for instance in this suggestion
from Ben (Year 9, SE1): ‘Germany had more Jewish
people than really anywhere else and they like
overpopulated the actual … the thoroughbred
German’. Rather than ‘thinking’ there was a large
Jewish population, this students’ positive assertion
that this was the case is made more troubling
by its marrying with the fallacious notion of ‘the
thoroughbred German’.
A response like this is not only a historical
simplification; its lack of criticality risks providing
rationalisation for the perpetrators’ actions. This
problem was well illustrated by the remarks of
Rachael (Year 10, LON6), who contended in a
matter-of-fact manner that Hitler and the Nazis
‘believed’ the number of Jews was at the root of
difficulties: ‘partly the cause of the problems was
overcrowding in Germany, so they thought that by
killing these people they would get like less crowded’.
There is a danger of misinterpreting these
examples, of inferring that these students hold
malevolent views and lack sensitivity. Neither can
be determined, but what can be said is that they
indicate the types of erroneous ideas or defective
conclusions which can arise from inaccurate
knowledge, or knowledge based principally on
presumption. With the exception of Rachael, the
students cited above do not draw direct causal
links between population size and mass murder.
However, incorrect understandings about how many
Jews were in Germany in the 1930s can (and does)
intersect with and inform other knowledge domains.
Socioeconomic status
Just as the above findings revealed that some
students held worrisome misconceptions about
the size of German Jewry, so the focus groups also
found that some young people entertained troubling
myths about the socioeconomic position of German
Jews. Many of these gravitated around or stemmed
from ideas about employment, both in the sense
of having or not having jobs and with regard to the
economic benefits that students believed came from
particular occupations. These themes were pointed
to by students of varying ages.
In many interviews students demonstrated general
awareness of Germany being afflicted by economic
crises prior to the Nazi period. Most recognised
the inherent severity of these, loosely sharing the
assessment made by Candice (Year 9, LON6)
that, ‘everyone was like poor and unemployed’.
However, any evidence that students understood
the fluctuating nature of Weimar economics
was commonly absent. There was, for example,
hardly any indication that students recognised the
difference between the hyperinflation of 1923 and the
depression after 1929, or any appreciation that there
was a period of relative stability between these two
events. Instead, students appeared to understand
the years of the Weimar Republic marked by
Figure 5.8 Student responses to survey question 44, ‘In 1933, what percentage of the German population
was Jewish?’ (percentage by year group)
Percentage of students
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
Less than 1% Approx. 5% Approx. 15% More than 30%
■ Year 7 ■ Year 8 ■ Year 9 ■ Year 10 ■ Year 11 ■ Year 12 ■ Year 13
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