What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

When and where did the Holocaust take place?
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France and they didn’t really know what to do with
these big Jewish populations, because whereas in
Germany the smaller Jewish population that they
sort of controlled or forced to leave, whereas with
millions and millions in Poland, and then later in the
Soviet Union, they had to sort of solve the problem
of it, and so that’s what led to the ‘Final Solution’
and the extermination camps (Alex, Year 12, EE1).
… as the Nazis expanded and went over into
Poland, which was a very large Jewish country
itself, and then when they expanded into Russia
they had the death squads that would go out
searching for Jewish people and killing them
(Anton, Year 12, EE1).
I think as Germany expanded their empire
throughout Europe they did take on a lot of
populations and therefore they did take on a lot of
Jews, and I think as a result of the overpopulation
to Hitler he had to have a ‘Final Solution’ in a way to
get rid of them. And I think there was a population
in a lot of the camps and he thought, so you could
see it as a result of German’s success in the war as
they were taking on more and more people I think
they went to the ‘Final Solution’ as a way to get rid
of them (Sam, Year 12, LON7).
Students in Years 12 and 13 were also
increasingly likely to try and provide more detailed
explanations for events than younger students. For
example, in one group interview students argued that
Hitler’s thirst for ‘world domination’ and the quest
for more ‘Lebensraum’ (living space) for the German
people were linked to his racial ideology and the
mass killing of Jews (Damien, Year 12, LON3). As
Samad (Year 12, LON3) said, ‘he wanted to create
a master race … and he wanted a stronghold over
Europe but maybe he felt he couldn’t do so if there
were still these minorities living there’.
Other students reflected on how Nazi policy
towards Jews changed over time and that the
mass killing of Jews was a direct result of German
expansion in the Second World War. As one Year 12
student said:
I don’t think the intention initially was to exterminate
all of the Jews in Germany, I think it was just to
basically highlight them as a minority and keep
them away from society. Neglect them, but I don’t
think it was initially to exterminate them, because
as said previously I think a lot of powers and a lot of
superpowers and a lot of European powers would
have not approved of it. So I think when the war
happened the fact that they were expanding their
own part in it, basically forced the fact of the
‘Final Solution’ (Samuel, Year 12 LON7).
Conceptions of ‘accelerated’ mass killing
and Nazi defeat
In offering an alternative explanation for the
relationship between the war and the Holocaust, a
number of students argued that developments in the
Holocaust were not directly connected to the early
phases of the war. However, a number of students
(particularly in Years 8, 9 and 10) reasoned that, as
the German army suffered setbacks and defeat,
the Nazis responded by accelerating the killings. As
Rob (Year 9, EE1) argued, ‘When he [Hitler] starts
losing the war … he gets a last-ditch attempt to
decide to kill as many as he can’. In this context,
Rob mentioned that this happened when the
‘Russians’ started fighting back following ‘Operation
Barbarossa’. He further argued: ‘The Russians got
very angry because they [the Germans] killed lots of
their people. So they pushed back and they were
coming close to Germany so Hitler decided to ramp
up the Jew killings’.
The idea that mass killing was somehow
accelerated because the German army was losing
the war was also shared by a number of students in
Years 12 and 13. One student noted, for example,
that around 1943, ‘when the German war effort was
slowing up they … move[d] to towards their ‘Final
Solution’ with the Jews before they lost the war’
(Peter, Year 13, EE1). In a similar vein another Year 12
student remarked:
…towards the end of the war the German
authorities saw that they might actually lose the
war, and it almost created an increased sense of
fever about this genocide of the Jews; they wanted
to try and, it sounds horrible to say, but get it over
and done with, I guess. Like, we are going to lose
this war possibly, we should try and finish what we
started, the genocide of the Jews, and at that point
it was almost like they got on the train, arrived at
Auschwitz and they were gassed instantly
(Will, Year 12, LON7).
However, a number of students in Years 12 and
13 did not agree with this perspective. Indeed, in
one interview exchange, Steve (Year 13, LON7)
emphatically declared that ‘at the time of the
“Final Solution” … the Germans did not think they
were losing’.
Notably, several younger students (Years 8
to 10) remarked that US entry in the war was a
particularly significant turning point in this process of
‘accelerated’ killing (a view not generally expressed
by older students). For example, Paige (Year 10, EE1)
reasoned:
I think at the start of the war Germany had the
upper hand. So they thought, oh no, we can just do
it slowly; it doesn’t matter. But when America joined
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