What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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Considerations and recommendations
knowledge and understanding of developments
in Eastern Europe is particularly important in this
regard, as it is key for students to be aware that
the Holocaust was not a phenomenon confined
to the borders of Germany. Once again, a gap
appears to exist between what historians know
about events ‘on the ground’ in Eastern Europe
and elsewhere, and what is often taught in the
classroom. For example, as a result of local and
regional studies, the participation and acquiescence
of millions in the enactment of continental genocide
is now starkly clear. However, this knowledge
does not appear to have entered the classroom in
significant ways. Indeed, both the survey and the
focus groups indicated that many students do not
think of the Holocaust as something that occurred
throughout Europe. They are unaware of regimes
like Antonescu’s in Romania that embraced murder
with no prompting from the Germans or of the Vichy
government’s willingness to deport ‘foreign’ Jews,
and they know little of the townsfolk in the Baltic
States, Ukraine and elsewhere who participated in
mass shootings of their neighbours.
It would be unreasonable to expect students to
hold in-depth knowledge of the multiple ‘histories of
the Holocaust’ (Stone 2010) across Europe during
the war years. But it is not at all implausible for
students to be more cognisant of its geographies,
and this is certainly necessary. On one level, this
would refer to its geographical expanse, to
an awareness of continental parameters and
recognition of the vagaries of experiences within
them. Without these, students will continue to think
of the Holocaust as a parochial, localised occurrence,
a ‘German’ event and not a phenomenon that
engulfed an entire continent.
Helping to develop students’ geographical
literacy of the Holocaust also involves improving their
comprehension of spaces within the history. Chief
here is the camp system; students not only need to
know where ‘the camps’ were located but also their
multifaceted nature.
Again, we cannot expect students to have an
encyclopaedic knowledge of all the camps in Nazioccupied
Europe but, by the end of Year 9 (age 14),
students should at least have a conceptual clarity
about the different types of camp, the function and
purpose of these, and an understanding of where
principal camps were sited. Instead, our research
revealed that while the vast majority of students
correctly associated the notion of ‘concentration
camps’ with the Holocaust, some believed that the
Holocaust was reducible to it. This may be
under stand able, but it reveals important gaps in
knowledge, as the vast majority of the six million
Jews who were murdered did not experience
concentration camps; most were murdered in
extermination camps on arrival or were killed by the
Einsatzgruppen and their local accomplices. A similar
expectation might be made for the ghettos – spaces
which are generally familiar to students, but whose
raison d’etre and development is unknown to most.
4. Britain’s role in the Holocaust
A final area of focus worth noting is the problematic
conception of Britain’s role in the Holocaust that
is prominent among many students. As Chapter
7 describes, 34.4 per cent of students surveyed
believed that the Holocaust triggered Britain’s entry
into war while a further 17.6 per cent believed the
British government drew up rescue plans to save
the Jews. Moreover, 23.8 per cent of all students
incorrectly reasoned that the British ‘did not know’
about the Holocaust. Evidence from both the survey
and focus-group interviews clearly demonstrated
that many students did not have the necessary
contextual knowledge to accurately explain Britain’s
response to the Holocaust.
The implication of these findings is that teachers
need to find ways to ensure that their students
have access to important and historically grounded
information about Britain’s role during the Holocaust.
As a result, students will be better equipped to
answer and assess vital and challenging issues
such as: when and what Britain knew; what choices
and possibilities were open to Britain and her Allies;
and what actions were and were not taken. Armed
with appropriate substantive information students
will be able to arrive at meaningful conclusions to
complex questions. However, if this knowledge
is absent they may potentially revert to common
myths and misconceptions that surround Britain’s
role in the Holocaust.
By way of conclusion, it is worth returning to
some of the key issues raised at the beginning of
this chapter in relation to broader framings of the
Second World War, the Holocaust and Britain’s cultural
memory. For it is abundantly clear that popular
conceptions of this history emphasise British probity,
courage and heroism. It is significant that, despite
the position of the Holocaust in the school curriculum
for almost 25 years, this narrow and inappropriate
conception of Britain’s role in the Holocaust
has not been challenged. Indeed, this research
reveals that major inaccuracies, uncertainties and
misconceptions are commonplace among young
people and, as a consequence, Britain’s ‘mythical’
role in relation to the Holocaust is alive and well.
This is perhaps surprising given that, as Chapter 4
reports, in other contexts students themselves were
able and willing to offer more critical commentaries
on the most celebratory narratives of British values