What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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Who were the perpetrators and who was responsible?
who was responsible, and for what.
Within academia, therefore, understanding of
the relationship between the German people and
the Holocaust long ago transcended questions of
‘Did they or didn’t they know?’, and ‘Were they or
weren’t they involved?’ In this context, students’
thinking on these matters was very much of interest.
Notably, free-text responses to the survey question
42, ‘Who was responsible?’ revealed that very few
students assigned responsibility to the German
people for the Holocaust (see Table 6.1). In total only
3.9 per cent of the 6,897 students who responded
to survey question 42 ascribed responsibility directly
to the Germans or Germany. Indeed, even if the
four possible coding categories that refer in some
measure to ‘Germans’ or ‘Germany’ (including, for
example, ‘Hitler and the Germans’) is aggregated,
the overarching total is only 9.0 per cent. Figure 6.7
shows that this trend was prevalent across all
year groups.
While this survey data indicated that only a small
number of students believed that ordinary Germans
bore any responsibility, a key aim of the focus-group
discussions was to acquire a much clearer sense of
how students understood the relationship between
the German people and the genocide of the Jews.
From the outset it was evident that the vast majority
of students steadfastly rejected the idea that all
Germans were Nazis or that Nazis were symptomatic
of Germans. Indeed, most students sharply
diferentiated between Germans and Nazis. As
interesting as this was to discover, it opened up lines
of enquiry centred on what students thought German
people had ‘done’ in relation to the Holocaust – what
they may have known or not known, and how these
factors related to responsibility. Pursuing these issues
was of particular interest, given the long struggle of
British culture and society to process the nature of
National Socialism (Kushner 1994) and determine its
relationship with the German people (Ramsden 2006).
For the majority of younger students (11 to 16
year olds), the German people ‘did’ three things.
The first of these was to help, support or allow
Hitler to come to power. Interestingly, only a few
students could actually talk about the means by
which this happened. When they did, students were
liable to speak in terms of Hitler being elected or
voted into power by the German people – which,
of course, was not strictly the case; Hitler was
appointed Chancellor in January 1933 by a coalition
of Conservatives hoping to utilise the Nazis’ electoral
support to buttress their own positions and forestall
the rise of communism. The claim – made by one
of the few Year 9 students to explicitly mention the
political process – that ‘he [Hitler] was elected prime
minister because people thought that he was the
right person to do this job’ (Juliette, Year 9, LON5)
is therefore something of a double-edged sword.
Although it suggests that Hitler did not ‘just’ become
the nation’s leader, its central premise is incorrect and
leads to erroneous conclusions about his popularity
and his possession of a mandate.
The general absence of knowledge and
under standing among most students from Years
7 to 9 about how Hitler and the Nazis came to
hold political office is striking. It is, however, not
altogether surprising given how most younger
students do not conceive of ‘the Nazis’ as a
political movement or party; these two realms
of knowledge are intrinsically linked.
Yet these shortcomings carry real implications.
As much as they sideline the very crucial role
played by violence and intimidation (in particular of
opposition parties) both in the months immediately
Figure 6.7 Percentage of students who made reference to the Germans/Germany when answering survey
question 42 ‘Who was responsible for the Holocaust?’ (by year group)
Percentage of students
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
Year 7 Year 8 Year 9 Year 10 Year 11 Year 12 Year 13
Year group