What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

Who were the perpetrators and who was responsible?
145
explaining that when ‘not as many people [were]
dying [in the ghettos] as they would like … then they
started shooting them’. However rudimentary, as an
attempt to place mass shooting with some sort of a
sequence and begin to think about causation, this
is a commendable start. But it was very much an
isolated incident. In the main many younger students
simply did not show awareness of mass shooting
being a mode of killing, let alone a phase in the
history of the genocide.
Older students typically displayed a greater level
of familiarity with the Einsatzgruppen and their
actions. Levels of depth and detail did vary at times:
at base, there were those students like Amelia (Year
13, EE1) who spoke of ‘death squads that were sent
to Eastern Europe and they’d just round Jews up
and shoot them’. A more advanced account saw the
introduction of time and place, as with the student
who commented, ‘They invaded Russia, they had
specific groups of people who’d go off and just
shoot Jews, just to kill them’ (Paul, Year 13, EE1).
Further still were those students who explicitly used
the term Einsatzgruppen, and – like the following
(exceptional) student – reflected on the significance
of these actions:
the Einsatzgruppen, who were the SS soldiers who
followed behind the main German advance going
into Russia, rounding up prisoners at war but also
specifically tasked with looking for Jews to just shoot
them, and I think incorporating that into an offensive
in a battle shows just how seriously the Nazis took
exterminating the Jews (Simon, Year 13, LON7).
Examples like these are evidently impressive
and at the higher end of student responses, but
they are excellent illustrations of how broad and
deep knowledge and understanding is crucial for
students to be able to advance more sophisticated
historical accounts. In general, levels of knowledge
and understanding of the Einsatzgruppen were more
robust among students in Years 12 and 13 than
those held by younger students. However, it is salient
that when older students were asked to estimate
the scale of killing enacted by the death squads,
responses fell dramatically below historical actuality:
an estimate of ‘thousands, at least, hundreds of
thousands maybe’ (Amelia, Year 13, EE1) was the
closest a student came to the reality.
The above findings into students’ knowledge of
Eichmann, Himmler, the SS and the Einsatzgruppen
suggest that students in general have a very limited
awareness of key individuals and agencies of the
Nazi state. While it is evident that some students
have heard of a few or all of these individuals and
groups, this is certainly not the case for the vast
majority. This raises the issue of who students do
associate with the perpetration of the Holocaust. The
answer for many students, was simply Adolf Hitler.
Indeed this Hitler-centric focus on the Holocaust was
revealed in numerous contexts.
To begin with, as Figure 6.4 demonstrates,
overwhelming numbers of students did associate
Hitler with the Holocaust. As can be seen, 91.4
per cent of all students associated Hitler with the
Holocaust, with 6.3 per cent uncertain. Among the
youngest students (Years 7 to 8) this percentage of
‘don’t knows’ was higher – registering at 12.5 per
cent and 9.5 per cent, respectively. That said, over
80 per cent of these students still answered ‘yes’,
and between Year 9 to Year 13 percentages only
grew, from 92.7 per cent to 97.4 per cent. Students’
explicit focus on Hitler and assertion of his centrality
in the Holocaust was in keeping with findings already
presented in this report. For example, as outlined
in Chapter 3 Hitler figured prominently in students’
conceptions and descriptions of the Holocaust.
Similarly, responses to survey question 35, in which
students were asked to identify specific images,
revealed that 97.6 per cent of students identified a
photograph of Adolf Hitler.
Students’ widespread recognition of Hitler’s role in
the Holocaust is perhaps of little surprise. However,
when these findings are juxtaposed against the absent
knowledge of key agents like Eichmann and the
Einsatzgruppen, then it is legitimate to consider why
students appear to know so much about Hitler and so
little about other key individuals and organisations. It
Figure 6.4 Percentage of students who responded
‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘don’t know’ when asked if the
name Adolf Hitler was connected to the Holocaust
(survey question 31)
2.3
39.3
6.3
91.4
16.3
■ Yes ■ No ■ Don’t know
Percentage of students
www.ioe.ac.uk/holocaust