What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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When and where did the Holocaust take place?
have been difficult to act ‘because there were other
countries in the war that supported Hitler, like Italy’.
It was evident that very few students were able
to offer any significant historical or contextual
knowledge to help them assess Britain’s situation.
The following comment and exchange, however,
illustrate how some students in Years 9 and 10
attempted to offer a rational explanation for
Britain’s response:
I think that it was hard for people to do anything
because Britain and most of Western Europe was
still recovering from the First World War. There was,
like, low weapons and supplies and stuff like that, so
it’s hard to try and do something so big as stop the
Holocaust (Carrie, Year 10, EE1).
Nick: It was quite difficult though. At that point Germany
had taken most of Europe – they were quite powerful.
And England was quite weak. They’d had to run away
from France quite fast.
Hannah: They had to retreat, didn’t they?
Nick: Yeah. And they were losing the battles in North
Africa. They won eventually but they were losing at
some points. And they didn’t want to go in headstrong
and try and find these camps that they didn’t know
where they were (Year 9, EE1).
More typically, however, younger students offered
explanations with vague and imprecise historical
knowledge. For example, when asked why Britain did
not act to prevent the Holocaust at an early stage in
the war, Lucy (Year 9, EE1) suggested:
Well … if you were in that position of being the
government you wouldn’t really know what to do
so you can’t … I mean maybe [British] troops were
doing something else. They’re fighting another
battle and they couldn’t really just gather up random
people, could they, and send them off to Germany?
They’d die surely.
In contrast to many younger students, some
Year 12 and 13 students were able to provide a
reasonable explanation as to why it would have been
difficult for Britain to take more strident action to stop
the Holocaust. Indeed, several students suggested
the British were limited in what they were able to: ‘I
think the question people pose is what could they
do even if they knew?’ said Simon (Year 13, LON7).
‘From D-Day the Allies were always advancing
towards Berlin.’ The British, he explained, would say,
‘We can’t get there any quicker than what we are
doing already’, so ‘there’s nothing they could do
except what they did’. Other students variously
reasoned that stopping the Holocaust would have
been difficult because ‘you have to go through
enemy ground’ (Max, Year 12, EE1), or ‘I don’t think
there was anything the British could have done,
because there were so many camps … it wasn’t just
a few in a concentrated area; there were quite a few
throughout Europe and especially Poland’ (Jim, Year
13, LON7). Alex (Year 12, EE1) also neatly expressed
the potential limitations of Britain’s position:
I think the UK did sort of condemn the actions
during the 1930s in the build-up to the war, when
the Nazis were starting to discriminate against
Jews, they did condemn the actions but they didn’t
want to go to war over it, because both Britain and
France were fairly sort of neutral, and then finally
when Germany invaded Poland and the war started,
that’s when they got involved, but I think when the
actual Holocaust started in 1941 the British didn’t
really have the ability to stop it at that point because
how could they get to Poland?
Although many students recognised that the
British government was limited in what it could do
once the Second World War had started, several
students suggested that Hitler should have been
stopped at an earlier point, possibly in the 1930s. As
one student argued:
They could have stopped Germany taking over
all the countries, like, before he started getting
so powerful. Because they didn’t do anything
while he was taking over most of Europe
(Rosie, Year 8, NE1).
Other students (aged between 12 and 15)
agreed, suggesting, ‘A lot of things would have been
prevented if they had, like, fought against him earlier’
(Rosie, Year 8, NE1), or ‘I think one of the leaders
of the country [Britain] should have come up, got a
plan and they could have saved more lives’ (Suzie,
Year 9, NE1).
However, when asked to provide specific details
many, students experienced difficulty or offered
fragmentary contextual information. Exceptions did
exist. For example, Ben (Year 9, SE1) suggested
that ‘they should have stopped Hitler at Munich’,
and Sabir (Year 10, EE1) said, ‘I think we really
should have acted sooner. Especially since Germany
broke … I think it was the Armistice.’ Perhaps
pointing to the Treaty of Versailles and the terms of
peace following the First World War, Sabir further
added, ‘They broke the Armistice so many times
that Britain should have intervened … they should
have intervened especially when they found out that
Hitler was increasing army numbers and submarines
and stuff like that’ (Sabir, Year 10, EE1). However,
attempts to illustrate points with specific historical or
contextual information generally proved rare among
students from Years 7 to 11.
Students in Years 12 and 13 also commented
on the issue of whether or not Britain could have
done anything at an earlier stage to prevent Hitler