What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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When and where did the Holocaust take place?
In a similar vein, many Year 12 and 13 students
appreciated that Jews also lived in countries
in western and northern Europe. Accordingly,
references to Jewish populations in ‘Britain’, ‘France’,
‘Belgium’, and ‘Norway’ were evident. Indeed, one
student was keen to point out, that ‘there weren’t as
many Jews there’ [western Europe] as ‘in Poland
and Russia’ (Alex, Year 12, EE1).
The location of mass killings
The majority of Jews killed in the Holocaust were
murdered in the Nazi extermination camps of Germanoccupied
Poland. Historians estimate the death toll
in the camps at approximately three million (Hilberg
1985: 338). The student survey and follow-up
interviews, therefore, offered a way to explore students’
understanding of where the Holocaust occurred.
Figure 7.5 shows that more than half of
students (54.9 per cent) incorrectly thought that the
largest number of killings of Jewish people took place
in Germany, and 58.5 per cent of these students
were at least fairly confident about this selection.
Just over a third of students (35.2 per cent)
correctly identified that the largest number of killings
of Jewish people took place in Poland, with twothirds
of them being at least fairly confident about
this response. Given the explicit relationship between
the Holocaust and the invasion of the USSR in June
1941 it is notable that very few students (2.3 per
cent) selected ‘The Soviet Union’ as an option.
More than 90 per cent of students thought the
answer was either ‘Germany’ or ‘Poland’, and very
few students believed that other countries could be
the loci of mass killing.
Figure 7.5 also shows that, as students get older,
they are more likely to answer this question correctly.
The contrast, between Year 7 (16.4 per cent correct)
and Year 13 (58.6 per cent correct) is particularly
striking. Nevertheless, it is notable that the majority of
students in Years 9, 10, 11 and 12 shared the view
that Germany is the correct answer.
Interviews with students in Years 12 and 13 added
complexity to this portrait. Typically, older students
appeared to be aware that most of the mass killings
occurred in Eastern Europe, and references to
Poland and the USSR as sites of the Holocaust were
numerous. Jews ‘were spread across Europe, and
indeed around the world’, said Phil (Year 12, LON7),
‘but of course the ones we tend to think about are
those in Eastern Europe, and there had to be a lot
there for the simple fact that six million of them were
killed in the end’.
The centrality of Germany (and Poland) in
students’ Holocaust consciousness
The very strong focus on Germany as the central
place from which victims of the Holocaust originated
and in which they were murdered was a common
feature of student interviews for those younger
than 17 or 18 years of age. It was very evident that
many students held the erroneous belief that Jews
constituted a significant proportion of the German
population during the 1930s. For example, Gary
(Year 9, SE1) noted that, ‘Germany had more Jewish
people than really anywhere else’, while Hannah
(Year 9, EE1) said, ‘they were all in Germany’.
As evidenced elsewhere in this study (see Figure
5.8, page 125), students grossly exaggerated
Figure 7.5 Student responses to survey question 51, ‘In which country did the largest number of killings
of Jewish people actually take place?’ (percentage by year group)
Percentage of students
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
Germany France Poland Hungary The Soviet
Union
■ Year 7 ■ Year 8 ■ Year 9 ■ Year 10 ■ Year 11 ■ Year 12 ■ Year 13
The USA
Israel