What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

10
Introduction
the fate of the Jews, even if many also seek to
simultaneously recognise the suffering of non-Jewish
victims. How this is managed differs from institution
to institution, country to country, though this is by
no means the only point of divergence. Invariably
institutional definitions will also differ on the framing
of the perpetrators, the language used to describe
their actions (including the separation of persecution
from murder) and the time-frame these acts are
posited within.
Such subtle variations are not surprising, of
course, and are more revealing of the present than
of the past. They also reflect the problems of taking
a word of Greek origin, which has been adopted in
the English speaking world, and introducing this into
other languages and national contexts. So while the
term ‘the Holocaust’ has been popularised around
the globe, this development has not been total:
as Monique Eckmann (2015:53) notes, the term
‘the Holocaust’ ‘is not universally employed’ and
‘cannot be easily transposed to other languages
and other socio-historical contexts’; other terms
continue to be more dominant in certain national
cultures. For example, in the Francophone world,
the term Shoah is popularly used; in Germany,
some of the leading historians of recent years ‘have
preferred to employ simply descriptive terminology
such as Nazi “Jewish policy” (Judenpolitik) or the
“policy/policies of annihilation” (Vernichtungspolitik)’
(Bloxham and Kushner 2005:3). This may help to
explain why, despite supranational organisations
like the European Union, United Nations and the
International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance
(IHRA) working to give ‘the memory of the Holocaust
the format of a standardized transnational memory
with a specific political agenda’ (Assmann 2010:
112) this has not resulted in a singular, one-sizefits-all
definition of the Holocaust (Carrier, Fuchs,
Messinger: 2015). What is noteworthy in the case
of IHRA, is how its 31 member countries all endorse
the Stockholm Declaration of 2000 – a proclamation
that frames the Holocaust in the following explicit
terms, and identifying it directly with the Hebrew
term for the genocide of the Jews: ‘The Holocaust
(Shoah) fundamentally challenged the foundations
of civilization. The unprecedented character of the
Holocaust will always hold universal meaning’
(IHRA, 2015).
Given the global circulation of so many uses
of ‘the Holocaust’, confusion and uncertainty
among non-specialists is perhaps to be expected.
As suggested by the Centre’s 2009 research into
teaching practices in English secondary schools
– described in fuller detail later in this chapter –
the most commonly shared understanding of the
Holocaust among teachers included ‘the persecution
and murder of a range of victims’ (Pettigrew et al
2009, 65). Interestingly, not only does this finding
appear to suggest a dissonance between teachers’
understanding and existing scholarship in this field,
it is also somewhat at odds with those institutional
definitions of the Holocaust currently most significant
within British society.
Chief among these is the Imperial War Museum
and its permanent Holocaust Exhibition, which since
its opening in 2000 has popularised the following
definition:
Under the cover of the Second World War, for the
sake of their ‘New Order’, the Nazis sought to
destroy all the Jews of Europe. For the first time in
history, industrial methods were used for the mass
extermination of a whole people. Six million people
were murdered, including 1,500,000 children. This
event is called the Holocaust.
The Nazis enslaved and murdered millions of other
people as well. Gypsies, people with physical and
mental disabilities, Poles, Soviet Prisoners of War,
trade unionists, political opponents, prisoners of
conscience, homosexuals, and others were killed
in vast numbers.
This definition could arguably be improved
further by reference to non-Nazi perpetrators,
collaborating individuals, agencies and regimes,
but it is nonetheless very clear in asserting the
Holocaust as an event specific to European Jewry,
which occurred within the context of the Second
World War. Importantly the Exhibition’s definition
does not overlook the persecution and murder of
non-Jewish victim groups, but rather distinguishes
these on account of perpetrator intent – i.e. only the
Jews were targeted for total murder – ‘the mass
extermination of a whole people’. It is noteworthy
that this definition is far more extensive than that
provided by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust –
the charitable organisation responsible for Britain’s
annual memorial day. In its latest iteration, the Trust’s
definition (2015) is outlined as follows:
Between 1941 and 1945, the Nazis attempted to
annihilate all of Europe’s Jews. This systematic
and planned attempt to murder European Jewry is
known as the Holocaust (The Shoah in Hebrew).
From the time they assumed power in 1933, the
Nazis used propaganda, persecution, and legislation
to deny human and civil rights to Jews. They used
centuries of antisemitism as their foundation. By
the end of the Holocaust, six million Jewish men,
women and children had perished in ghettos,
mass-shootings, in concentration camps and
extermination camps.