What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

When and where did the Holocaust take place?
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from executing his plans to dominate Europe. One
student, Jeremy (Year 12, LON7), reasoned that the
British shared ‘a certain guilt about not intervening
during the 1930s when persecution [of the Jews]
was going on’ and criticised British attempts ‘to
negotiate with Hitler and appease Hitler’. Other
students, however, countered this argument by
suggesting that Britain could not have known in the
late 1930s about Hitler’s plans to murder all the Jews
in Europe. This argument is neatly illustrated in the
following exchange with Alex (Year 12, EE1):
Interviewer: Do you think the British should have
done more here?
Alex: Some people make the argument that Britain
should have got involved in 1938 when Germany
annexed Czechoslovakia, or even Austria.
Interviewer: So before Hitler starts invading Poland.
Alex: Yeah, but the British and the French couldn’t have
known that the Germans were actually going
to exterminate all the Jewish people at that point,
because that was before it really started.
What was demonstrated in many interviews,
therefore, was the belief among students that
it would have been difficult, due to existing
circumstances, for Britain to pre-empt the Holocaust.
This perspective was also illustrated in debates
among older students that focused on whether
or not Britain and the Allies should have bombed
the death camps or the transport networks
leading to them. This issue is, of course, one that
commentators and historians have vigorously
debated, particularly in relation to the potential
bombing of Auschwitz (Feingold 1995; Neufeld and
Berenbaum 2000; Wyman 1984).
Almost without exception, however, students
in Years 12 and Year 13 rejected arguments to
bomb the camps. Students generally reasoned that
bombing the camps would not only ‘give away to
the Nazis that the Allies had quite good surveillance
systems and they knew that the camps existed,’ but
also that it would provoke the Germans to ‘just kill
everybody in the camp and hide all the evidence’
(Mike, Year 12, LON7). One student even argued that
bombing the camps would have been disastrous,
as it would have induced the Nazis to react in ‘a
terrible manner’ and accelerate the killings (Phil, Year
12, LON7). As such, he argued that the British ‘hold
no moral responsibility over death of people in the
camps’ as they were not in a position to do anything
of significance.
Overall, it appeared that while several students
believed Britain might have done more to prevent
Hitler from invading countries across Europe and so
potentially stopping the Holocaust, most appreciated
this would have been difficult for many reasons.
The general tenor of the interviews, then, was
that – despite undoubted sympathy for the Jews –
students believed it would be unfair to blame Britain
and the Allies for not acting sooner and/or more
decisively. Many historians today accept how limited
the scope for action was, but there remains criticism
that so little time, energy and resources were
committed to even trying to come up with rescue
plans – that rescue of the Jews simply did not figure
highly in Allied thinking (Kushner 1994: 197–201) –
and most students did not consider this.
A striking feature of the survey findings was that
more than a third of students believed that Britain
declared war on Germany when they found out about
mass killings. Indeed, among the youngest students
(Years 7 and 8), more than 40 per cent selected this
option. Furthermore, 17.6 per cent of all students
believed that once they knew about the killings the
British government drew up rescue plans to save the
Jews. As explained above, both these positions are,
of course, historically inaccurate. Accordingly, during
interviews, an attempt was made to understand
student perspectives on this more clearly.
For the most part, it appeared that students in
Years 7 to 11 did not have the necessary contextual
information to explain Britain’s reaction to the
Holocaust. Consistent with the survey findings, a
number of younger students said that Britain did go
to war to save the Jews. For example, Rosie (Year 8,
NE1) said that, on hearing of the mass killing, ‘they
[the British government] started attacking the Nazis
in France, like pushing them back’. Similarly Rebecca
(Year 10, LON6) said, ‘I think Winston Churchill, yeah,
I think he was the Prime Minister, I think he was the
first one to say that England should go to war with
Germany.’ Other younger students appeared less
certain and although many suggested that the British
‘tried to help’, few were able to provide historical
detail. In general it was clear that most students from
Years 7 to 11 were confused about the extent to
which Britain went to war to save the Jews.
By contrast, in a slight contradiction to the survey
findings, many older students interviewed (i.e. those
studying history in Years 12 and 13) appeared to
appreciate that Britain did not go to war to stop the
Holocaust from happening. This is exemplified in the
following exchange:
Interviewer: Do you think that Britain went to war
because of what Germany was doing to the Jews?
Samad: No.
Damien: No, it was the treaty with Poland, Poland got
invaded, Britain intervened, I don’t think they were either
aware of the extent of what was happening in Germany,
or it didn’t bother them, until something happened that
they had to get involved in (Year 12, LON3).
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