What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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When and where did the Holocaust take place?
I can’t remember when Hitler came into power, but
he started introducing laws that restricted people
(Rob, Year 9, EE1).
In another interview Year 9 students agreed that
Hitler did not order the killing of Jews as soon as
he came to power. Rather, as the exchange below
illustrates, they reasoned that a series of measures
were enacted to gradually make things worse for
the Jews:
John: He started to introduce the posters and then…
Georgia: He had to get people on his side first.
John: Like teaching at school about the stereotypical
Jewish people – how they’re evil…
Tim: They take all the jobs and everything.
Harry: He slowly introduced … He doesn’t want
everyone to know suddenly. He wants to tell them in a
way where they think he’s not trying to tell them but this
happens to be where they go, so…
Interviewer: So it’s a gradual process.
All: Yeah (Year 9, EE1).
However, as can be seen, a feature of the
interviews was the imprecise nature of the historical
knowledge students used to make sense of this
period. The interview dialogue below with a group
of Year 9 students represented a rare, albeit limited,
incidence in which students attempted to offer some
factual or contextual knowledge focused on the Nazi
treatment of Jews during the 1930s:
Interviewer: Were there key events? I think you
mentioned the Night of Broken Glass, didn’t you? Were
there other important events?
Fahima: The boycott.
Leah: The Nuremburg Law thing where there were laws
that Aryans can’t marry Jews.
Aayliyah: That was in 1938.
Leah: Yeah that was a turning point I would say.
Interviewer: Why was that important do you think?
Leah: It…
Aayliyah: What, that Aryans can’t marry Jews?
Leah: Yeah that Aryans can’t marry Jews.
Aayliyah: It told the people of Germany that Judaism
is wrong, so it kind of like it gave them that idea and
excluded them, yeah, from the rest of…
Interviewer: So we have got the Nuremburg Laws as
being an important kind of date or event. The Night of
Broken Glass, why was that important do you think?
All: [No answer]
Interviewer: Or what actually took place on that event?
Leah: Burning the synagogues.
Aayliyah: Like their businesses were – shops and
things were burnt.
Interviewer: Okay.
Holly: Yeah, and then I think afterwards people weren’t
allowed to shop in Jewish shops any more.
Leah: I think it showed that the German population
did have a hatred of the Jews because I don’t think
directly the army came and started killing Jews, it was
the people of Germany that chose to engage and join
in with things.
Interviewer: So we have got Nuremburg Laws, we
have got the Night of Broken Glass, are there any other
particularly important events that…?
Leah: Is the Jewish star one, the one where the Jews
had to start wearing the Star of David to be identified
and how they said, ‘Oh Jews don’t sit on this bench.’
(Year 10, LON5).
The significant feature of this interview exchange
is that it was not typical of other interviews with
students in Years 7 to 11. In this example, students
are attempting to draw on and organise their
historical knowledge to make sense of the period.
But, even here, the details are often sketchy (e.g.
in reference to the implementation of the order for
Jews to wear the Star of David) and/or inaccurate
(e.g. reference to the Nuremberg Laws which were
enacted in 1935, not 1938).
The lack of reference to specific Nazi policies
or acts against the Jews is very illuminating. For
example, across all interviews with students in Years
7 to 11, the April 1933 Boycott – an event which
revealed much about the regime’s approach to anti-
Jewish policy at the time (Koonz 2003: 41; Evans
2006: 382–3) – was cited by only one student, while
Kristallnacht (the so-called ‘Night of Broken Glass’)
– which is widely regarded by scholars as a ‘major
turning point’ in the history of ‘pre-war anti-Jewish
persecutions’ (Friedländer 1997: 270) – was referred
to by only two students. This finding further related
to the survey question that asked students to identify
words related to the Holocaust. Here, only 36.1 per
cent associated Kristallnacht with the Holocaust
(63.9 per cent did not associate it or did not know
if it was an associated term).
Students’ general lack of specific historical
knowledge unquestionably hindered their ability
to distinguish between critical periods in the
development of the Holocaust. For example, it
was evident that students had not considered
that between 1933 and 1939 Nazi persecution
was confined to German (and then Austrian and
Sudeten) Jews. Few appeared to appreciate that,
with the outbreak of war in September 1939, new
and extensive Jewish populations increasingly came
under the control of the Reich and the development
of continent-wide antisemitic persecution began on
an unprecedented scale.
In contrast to younger students, some in Years 12
and 13 were more able to offer both precise historical
detail on how events developed over time and
more robust causal explanations. While the survey