What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

When and where did the Holocaust take place?
191
the number of Jews living in Germany in the
1930s. Although less than 1 per cent of the prewar
population of Germany was Jewish, survey
responses suggested that students believed the
percentage was considerably higher. For example,
in answer to survey question 44, ‘In 1933, what
percentage of the German population was Jewish?’,
only 8.8 per cent of all respondents provided the
correct answer. Over a third (38.6 per cent) believed
that the Jewish population of pre-war Germany
was around 15 per cent, closely followed by 35.3
per cent who considered it to be over 30 per cent.
Cumulatively, these figures suggest that 73.9 per
cent of the total sample – almost three-quarters –
dramatically overestimated the size of the Jewish
population in Germany in 1933.
With this in mind, it is not surprising that younger
students believed or concluded that most Jews
killed during the Holocaust came from Germany.
As outlined in Chapter 5, overestimations of the size
of this population were also evident in interviews.
‘I think it was just over half the population was Jews’
(Erin, Year 9, SE1), and, ‘like 60 per cent, maybe’
(Kayley, Year 9, SE1).
Although the survey revealed that large numbers
of Year 12 and 13 students overestimated the size of
the Jewish population in pre-war Germany, interview
exchanges with 17 and 18 year olds studying history
provided a more complex picture.
On the one hand, for example, a number of
students believed that Jews were a relatively small
minority of the German population. The students who
attempted to quantify the size of the Jewish
population in pre-war Germany variously estimated it
to be ‘3–4 per cent’, ‘5 per cent’, ‘8 per cent’ or
‘10 per cent’. One student said, ‘I don’t think Jews
[were] widespread over Germany; there was definitely
a group of Jews like there is Muslim people in this
country’ (Patrick, Year 12, LON7), and another added
that it was only ‘a small percentage’ (Samad, Year
12, LON3). Students further explained that the Nazis
‘over-exaggerated’ the influence of Jews for political
gain and cited the influence of Goebbels in this
regard. One student, for example, argued that ‘it was
embellished and hyperbolised just due to the fact that
based on his [Goebbels’s] pure hatred he used the
Jews as a scapegoat’ (Samuel, Year 12, LON7).
On the other hand, a number of students in Years
12 and Years 13 took a different view. For example,
Phil (Year 12, LON7) reasoned, ‘I wouldn’t be
surprised if there were quite a lot of Jews in Germany’
while Paul (Year 13, EE1) commented that the prewar
Jewish population of Germany constituted ‘a
large amount’. Some students also presented the
stereotypical view that Jews were a dominant and
unsavoury influence in German society:
There was a fair amount and I think they were quite
rich, they were seen as the people that had a lot of
money, and also in Germany, and historically, Jews
were never seen to have a homeland, they always
seemed to be the foreigners in another country that
wasn’t where they came from originally. So people
just saw them as people that had no homeland,
people that kept just taking off of the country, like
leeching into a country and then just taking off in it
and getting rich (Paul, Year 12, LON7).
Overall, therefore, interview responses from
students in Years 12 and 13 presented a mixed
picture and, on this issue, not even their knowledge
was secure. Some students believed the percentage
of Jews in pre-war Germany to be relatively small,
whereas others grossly exaggerated it. What is clear,
is that very, very few Year 12 or 13 students who
were interviewed accurately understood the prewar
Jewish population to be extremely low and a
significant degree of uncertainty existed among even
these older students about the scale and influence
of Jews in German society during the 1930s.
Interviews across all age groups revealed that
students typically had some knowledge of the rise
of Hitler during the 1930s, of Nazi propaganda
techniques and the treatment of the Jews in
Germany. It was evident, however, that while
Germany was a key locus of the Holocaust for many
students, understandings of the development of the
Holocaust and its geographical reach after 1939 was
much weaker. Nevertheless, as the survey revealed,
about a third of students (and this improved with
age) did understand that Poland was geographically
significant in relation to the Holocaust.
The interviews provided supporting evidence
that some students were aware that Poland was
home to a sizeable Jewish population. ‘Poland
was very Jewish’ (Liam, Year 9, NE1) and ‘mainly
in Poland’ (Jacob, Year 9, SE1) were two illustrative
observations, while Carrie (Year 10, EE1) concluded
that Jews were in Poland ‘a lot – because lots of the
concentration camps were in Poland’.
The fact that a number of students (albeit only
about a third of the total sample) recognised that
the Holocaust went beyond Germany is potentially
encouraging and suggests that younger students
are able to grasp the relationship between the
Holocaust and German military expansion to the east
in an elementary way. In one interview exchange, for
example, a student explained that the Holocaust took
place ‘in countries that Germany invaded’ (Nick, Year
9, EE1) before the group proceeded to list Poland,
Netherlands, Ukraine, Russia and Belgium. On one
level, however rudimentary this chronicling may be,
it revealed recognition of the series of connections
between the war and the Holocaust.
www.ioe.ac.uk/holocaust