What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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When and where did the Holocaust take place?
were virtually all Germans and assume that most
people were killed inside Germany itself, so that a
connection with the Second World War is perhaps
less clear than if one’s conception is of a continentwide
genocide.
Many students suggested that Hitler’s desire for
war and his subsequent treatment of Jews was
connected to a thirst for ‘power’. Typically, however,
as the examples below suggest, these explanations
were often vague and not underpinned by any
substantive historical knowledge:
Interviewer: So does World War II have a link to all
of this?
Alice: I think it does because it was during that time,
but I think they both had their separate reasons for the
cause of it and I think the Holocaust was just kind of a
way of showing off their power really … Yeah, I just think
it was kind of to show off power (Year 9, NE1).
Interviewer: Why was World War II important?
Makda: Is it because the Germans were trying to show
how brave they were?
Interviewer: How do you mean?
Makda: Like, because they were going to do all these
things to the Jews in Germany they thought that, okay,
if we go to other countries then we can show – we can
try to tell the other countries that they should be scared
of us because if they challenge us we will do the same
thing to them (Year 8, LON6).
Interviewer: So you were saying that World War II
maybe had some sorts of connection to this. What sort
of connection might it have?
Zoe: The idea of wanting power.
Interviewer: Okay.
Charlotte: Because wars happen sometimes because
countries don’t agree on the same terms. They fight for
land sometimes; they want to overthrow someone else,
so they can rule – so, yeah (Year 8, LON5).
Interviewer: It sounds like we are saying that the
war is quite important to the Holocaust. Why?
What is the link?
Annie: Just him coming to power, really. I think he
wanted to use the Jewish people as his slaves.
Sarah: When the war started that is when he realised
just how much power he had, which is why maybe
he was then just, like, well if I have that much power
to start a war and I think he was probably winning at
this point, and there was a point when he was winning
wasn’t there?
All: Yes.
Sarah: And if he realised that he had so much power he
thought he could (Year 10, NE1).
The examples cited above proved typical of the
vague explanations that students appeared able to
offer about the relationship between the war and
the Holocaust. However, as the example below
suggests, a few students were able to link Hitler’s
quest for power to Nazi racial ideology (see Chapter
5 for discussion):
Tom: I think he thought that if he had won the war
he had done it so that Germany could be this sort of
master country and it sort of goes back to like the First
World War and when the Kaiser of Germany wanted
Germany to be a world power and have a massive
empire. So it sort of goes back to the fact that Hitler
realised that when he wins the war he wants Germany
to be this massive power and perfect. So to do that he
has got to get rid of all the people who are imperfect in
his mind – yeah.
Annie: Because he wasn’t just killing, like, he was
making people do things so he had his perfect race
(Year 10, NE1).
Despite the hints of historical understanding
evidenced here, it is important to note that this group
of Year 10 students was unable to offer any specific
chronological detail on how German expansion to
the East led to the systematic and organised mass
killing of Jews, particularly in lands previously ruled by
Poland and the Soviet Union.
In contrast to the more limited views and
understandings of younger students, it was found
those in Year 12 and 13 typically had a clearer
understanding of the relationship between the
Holocaust and the Second World War. Most students
understood that as the German army conquered
more land, particularly in Eastern Europe, millions of
Jews came under their control. It was in this context,
Year 12 and Year 13 students typically reasoned,
that the Nazis implemented a policy of mass
extermination. The following explanations show how
they made this explicit and important connection:
The further they [the Germany army] invaded east
and west the more Jews are then coming under
their control, so as the war goes on the more and
more countries they are occupying, they’ve got a
greater number of Jews, so in the ’30s some of
the Jews that they exiled and sent, escaped to
countries east of them, they’ve got now under their
control, so they’ve just got like basically too many
of them, they don’t know what to do with them
(Amelia, Year 13, EE1).
Yeah, I think it was when they invaded Poland in
1939 they set up the ghettos, the Warsaw ghetto
and others, you know, where Jews were contained
and other Poles. And only until after they’d beaten