What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

Who were the perpetrators and who was responsible?
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of mass extermination. Put simply, for the most part
students erroneously believed the German people
‘didn’t know’.
Summary
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Typically, students from all age groups had little
or no sense of the crucial role played by other
agents and agencies across Europe in facilitating
– and at times carrying out – mass murder.
Students were not familiar with collaborating
regimes (such as the Vichy government), Axis
allies, or the role played by local populations. This
has repercussions for identifying culpability and
responsibility. Both of which are discussed further
in Chapter 7.
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Many students were not familiar with key
agents and agencies connected to the Holocaust.
Just 23.2 per cent of all students indicated Adolf
Eichmann was linked to the genocide, while 46
per cent did not know.
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During interviews a tiny minority of students
referred to the role played by Heinrich Himmler
in the Holocaust and 75.7 per cent of all survey
respondents either did not believe, or did not
know, if the Einsatzgruppen was connected.
Findings from the focus-group discussions
confirmed these gaps in students’ knowledge –
especially among younger students.
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Year 12 and Year 13 students showed greater
awareness of some key Nazi figures, and are
more acquainted with the Einsatzgruppen and its
actions. However, among these students upper
estimates of the number of victims claimed by
mass shootings in the East did not exceed a few
hundred thousand; in actuality, around 1.5 million
were killed as a result of the ‘Holocaust by bullets’.
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Despite 44.4 per cent of survey respondents
identifying the SS as having a connection with the
Holocaust, many students either did not refer to
the organisation in focus-group interviews or were
unclear as to its precise role in the genocide.
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The individual whom most survey respondents
associated with the Holocaust was Adolf Hitler
(91.4 per cent) although, in interview, the vast
majority of students recognised that he did not kill
anyone himself. More than half (56.1 per cent) of
younger students (Years 7 to 9) believed that the
Holocaust was solely attributable to Adolf Hitler.
This figure decreased with age. By Year 13, for
example, only a quarter of students (25.5 per
cent) ascribed full responsibility for the Holocaust
to Hitler. Typically, older students appreciated that
Hitler acted with support from others including key
members of the Nazi party.
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That said, many students from across the age
range tended to personalise and narrate their
understanding of Holocaust-related events through
Hitler: he passes laws, he creates camps, and the
like. This was especially prevalent among younger
students, where Hitler was depicted as the primary
agent of death, if not the omnipresent murderer.
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Where younger students see Hitler as having
‘thoughts’ or ‘ideas’, older students more explicitly
frame these as ideology. Notably, although
students of all ages referred or alluded to ideas
of race, racism and Aryan ideals, nearly all show
little to no awareness of where these respective
ideas historically originated. The central notions in
Hitler’s ideology were, therefore, attributed solely
and exclusively to him, with no recognition of
their roots in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
Western culture and society.
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Year 12 and 13 students tended to move away
from the idea of Hitler as the only political force
in Germany, positioning him within a broader
framework. This does not reduce his centrality,
but it does see him framed in a more managerial
manner: he is said to ‘delegate’ to others; it is
noted that he does not always attend meetings,
and that in many respects that he does not need
to. Among older students, Hitler is presented as
an overseer in a project which included agents
and agencies other than him. Their knowledge
of his absence from the Wannsee Conference
was illustrative here, despite a narration
which erroneously suggested the existence
of a document produced at the meeting that
expressed commitment to the ‘Final Solution’.
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Most students in Years 7 to 9 were not aware that
‘the Nazis’ referred to the Nazi Party nor that the
party enjoyed significant, broad-based support
across all sectors of the German population.
Moreover, these 11 to 14 year olds also tended
not to know how the National Socialist German
Workers’ Party came to acquire political power.
Where there were exceptions, students believed
the Nazis were elected to rather than being invited
in to government. Older students (Years 12 to 13)
were considerably more familiar with the history
of the Nazi Party prior to 1933, although many
similarly believed the party was voted into power.
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