What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

Who were the perpetrators and who was responsible?
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11). Where such readings were commonplace in
the immediate decades after 1945, research as
long ago as the late 1960s began to debunk this
perception and gave rise to ‘the notion of polycratic
rule – a multidimensional power-structure, in which
Hitler’s own authority was only one element (if a very
important one)’ (Kershaw 2000: 74). Yet while some
students undoubtedly did hold dear the idea of Hitler
directing events, as suggested in Chapter 3, there
were occasions when individuals would recognise
the flaws in this interpretation.
This became apparent when, in conversation,
students were asked whether or not Hitler had
actually killed anyone himself. Students (of all ages)
were acutely aware that Hitler could not have carried
out the persecution or mass killings by himself, as the
exchange below illustrates:
Interviewer: Could Hitler have done it [killed Jews in
mass numbers] by himself?
Anthony: No.
Lara: No.
Jess: No.
Lara: He needed an army behind him.
Anthony: Yeah, he needed people to support him
(Year 9, SE1).
When asked to explain this issue further, students
across all the interview groups variously commented:
‘he got other people to kill them’ (Michael, Year 8,
NE1); ‘he was the leader … he just told them and
they did it’ (Scott, Year 8, NE1); ‘he controlled it –
he had the power to open the camps but not kill the
people so he employed people to do that’ (Elliot,
Year 9, EE1).
Where some simply refuted the idea, others were
more assertive that he was not a ‘hands-on’ killer: ‘I
don’t think he touched blood’, remarked one student
(Kristy, Year 9, LON6); ‘he didn’t get his hands dirty’,
said another (Annie, Year 10, NE1).
Comments like these were not confined to those
sites where mass atrocity occurred. Many students
emphasised Hitler’s involvement from the very
beginning: ‘He started it off’ (Nick, Year 9, EE1),
and ‘it started around when Hitler came to power’
(Amanda, Year 9, LON6) were sentiments expressed
on more than one occasion. Where sometimes the
‘it’ in question was quite clearly killing, at other times
this referred not to murder but to persecution, as
with the student who explained, ‘I can’t remember
when Hitler came into power, but he started making
restrictive laws for the first couple of years, then
set up camps where he sent people’ (Nick, Year 9,
EE1). For other students, it was clear that learning
about certain restrictions had made a particular
impression on them; this was clearly evident in the
following exchange between Year 10 (NE1) students
(emphases added):
Samantha: And he liked stopped Jewish people from
being able to go certain places, like the cinema or like
certain schools, they weren’t allowed to go to and stuff,
because he stopped them.
Interviewer: How did he stop them?
Samantha: He made laws, yeah he made like laws.
Tom: Separate schools and buses. Well not buses, but
like…
Samantha: It was like apartheid. Like they made Jewish
people sit at the back or away from everyone else.
Like that was earlier on before the actual Holocaust
had started. Because that is what I learned from Anne
Frank’s diary.
Interviewer: What do you think … Why pass these
laws? What was the purpose?
Samantha: He was trying to get rid of all the Jewish…
Tom: He didn’t really, at the time I think, have the power
or conviction to actually deal with them like in the way
he wanted to.
Samantha: And he blamed them for the First World
War, like called them backstabbers and it was like their
fault for the First World War so…
Annie: Didn’t he want the Jews to give, like didn’t he
want to take everything the Jews had off them, because
the Jews were the type of people who had the most
money because they had the education and he wanted
to kill them off so there was more money for people that
he wanted…
Daniel: …the German People.
This interview exchange is interesting on many
levels. First, students’ repeated reference to ‘he’
demonstrated an explicit focus on Hitler and his
actions as central to events. Indeed, in keeping with
findings in Chapter 3, Hitler appeared to act as the
‘personification’ of the Holocaust for these (and
other) students. Second, the dialogue suggested the
students appreciated that Hitler’s primary method
of securing his aims at this time was through
legislation (passing laws) and not directly through
killing. Third, it is striking that while the exchange
invests Hitler with considerable power and influence,
there is simultaneously an undercurrent of him not
being able to carry out his wishes and ‘deal with
them like in the way he wanted to’. In other words,
this dialogue revealed that although some of the
understanding is limited, there is some attempt at
explanation and some recognition that Hitler’s power
was not absolute.
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