What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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Who were the perpetrators and who was responsible?
The following Year 10 (LON5) exchange typified
how many students saw the relationship between
Hitler and his agents (emphases added):
Aaliyah: He got people to do it for him.
Interviewer: How did he do that?
Aaliyah: Well he had the armies and then they would,
like, build the concentration camps and that would then
… he wouldn’t actually do it like himself.
Fahima: He would just give commands.
Aaliyah: Yeah, he would get other people to take the
Jews out of their houses, what was it, the night of…?
Fahima: The Night of the Broken Glass.
Aaliyah: That’s it, where…
Fahima: He ordered the…
Holly: Synagogues and Jewish shops.
Aaliyah: Yeah Hitler didn’t do that but he…
Fahima: Organised it.
Once again, in students’ minds, ‘he’ (Hitler) was
central to events. But in their view Hitler did not personally
carry out the actions, rather he gave ‘orders’
and ‘commands’ and got others to do his bidding.
In general, Year 12 and Year 13 students
possessed a slightly more sophisticated
understanding of Hitler’s role in the Holocaust. To
begin with, however, their understandings mirrored
those of younger students. For example, there was
broad awareness that Hitler did not personally kill
any individual or group: ‘He never did any of the dirty
work himself’, Erin (Year 12, EE1) remarked, in the
process echoing similar sentiments expressed by
those further down the age range. Instead – again in
keeping with younger cohorts – many 17 and 18 year
olds cast Hitler in an ‘executive’ role.
However, where students in Years 7 to 11 believed
that Hitler remained the ultimate arbiter of life and
death, students in Years 12 and 13 tended to present
the image of someone with oversight of a project or
programme. Importantly, this sense that Hitler ‘just
got other people [to do it for him]’ (Erin, Year 12, EE1)
did appear in discussion with some younger students
as well, but unlike those conversations, students
in Years 12 and 13 were generally able to provide
more detailed and considered accounts of how this
happened. An illustrative exchange in this respect
is the following response of two students to the
question ‘What did he [Hitler] do?’
Phil: Well he sort of delegated it, didn’t he? He didn’t
actually have much role in the day-to-day running of the
camps, but he sort of delegated it. I can’t remember the
guy’s name, but it was under his instruction, all of it.
Mike: He provided the political thinking, ideology I
suppose, and … in Mein Kampf, he outlined his political
basis for it. Yes, I think he delegated a lot, yeah
(Year 12, LON7).
These remarks touched on a number of issues,
of course, but the notion of ‘delegation’ is clearly of
a slightly different nature to that of ‘ordering’. It also
suggests a different complexion to understandings
that power within the Third Reich merely resided in
and emanated from a single individual. This does
not so much deny Hitler a central – even the central
– role within the system of government, as hint at a
more complex configuration of rule. In this respect
a number of older students reasoned that Hitler
was an influential ‘figurehead’ who ‘set the agenda’
and ‘provided the political thinking [and] ideology’
behind the actions of the Nazis. For example, one
Year 12 student, Jamie (LON3), referred to Hitler’s
‘inner circle’ of ‘Goebbels, Goering and Himmler’ and
reasoned that, while Hitler always remained ‘number
one’, these key individuals turned his plans ‘from
idea to reality’.
Such contentions hinted that older students were
more aware of other key figures in the Nazi regime
and had a sense that these persons did have some
measure of agency and influence. Further indications
that many students in Years 12 and 13 exhibited a
more nuanced appreciation of the politics and power
behind the Holocaust came across in discussions
of the Wannsee Conference. Not only were older
students far more aware of this event than younger
ones, there was also a more developed impression of
Hitler’s relationship to it. Most knew that Hitler did not
attend the meeting, yet they did not see his absence
as an indication of ignorance or lack of involvement;
rather, it was taken as evidence of his working
practice.
This understanding was further evidenced by
how students talked about what happened at
Wannsee and what was produced from it: while
many incorrectly believed something was signed at
Wannsee, a number of students emphasised it did
not matter that Hitler did not put his name to this
document. ‘He never put his name on any of the
documents or anything’, commented one student
(Jake, Year 12, LON7), while another remarked,
‘He got everyone else to sign about the “Final
Solution”’ (Danielle, Year 13, EE1).
The approach of some Year 12 and 13 students
to the Wannsee Conference thus provided various
insights. As much as ‘knowing’ that the meeting
took place gave students the opportunity to develop
potentially more sophisticated chronologies of the
Holocaust and a more multidimensional appreciation
of the agents and agencies involved, it was clear that
something of a fundamental flaw remained with the
understanding of a notable number of students.
On the one hand, there was the positive that
these older students appreciated that Hitler didn’t
need to be present in order to be involved, and a