What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

Considerations and recommendations
219
and those who survived.
Many Holocaust education organisations see
commemoration as one of their primary goals, and it
is clear from our research that young people and their
teachers across the country understand and value
the importance of commemoration. In this sense, the
findings of this research can be seen as reassuring.
Young people are overwhelmingly convinced of the
importance and significance of what they understand
to be the Holocaust. They speak movingly, for
example, of the power of meeting a survivor, and the
vast majority believe that the Holocaust is something
that all young people should learn about. So it may
appear that memorialisation and the place of the
Holocaust in students’ collective consciousness are
secure, at least for the coming generation. However,
to adopt such a complacent position would be to
misinterpret some of the key findings of this research.
Two principal issues are salient here.
The first centres on the question of whether it is
possible to commemorate something in meaningful
ways without a full appreciation of what is being
commemorated. The findings of this research reveal
that many students do not know about some of the
most important elements of the Holocaust, so that
legitimate questions remain regarding how far that
memory is secure and meaningful. How secure, for
example, is Holocaust memory if students:
■■
don’t know more about the people who they are
commemorating?
■■
don’t really understand why and how the
Holocaust happened?
■■
don’t understand the catastrophic impact of the
Holocaust on millions of individuals and broader
European society and culture?
The possibility that memory could be based on shaky
and shallow historical foundations is one that should
concern us all.
Of course, this is not to undermine the special
importance of Holocaust commemoration.
Rather, it is a call for those working in the field of
Holocaust education to consider ways in which
knowledge, understanding and memory can be
more robustly related. The argument here is not
to replace commemoration but to strengthen and
deepen it. The challenge is to pursue a new framing
that both emphasises the testing of common
knowledge (which is often based upon myths and
misconceptions) against the historical record and
seeks to bring the insights of historiographical
scholarship into the public arena. In this respect
Schweber and Findling (2007: 275) argue that, for
remembering to be authentic, the Holocaust needs
to be understood in greater depth and complexity:
While it may be comforting for us to shape
Holocaust memory, commemoration and education
efforts around heroes, survivors, optimism and hope,
ultimately the Holocaust must remembered in all of
its tragedy and in all of its complexity. Only then can
dignified commemoration be offered in memory of
the millions of voiceless victims whose stories never
reached us.
The second issue warranting attention is
acknowledgment that an important distinction must
be made between commemoration and learning.
Chapter 1 argues that commemorating a past event
is not the same as grappling with the complexities
of why it happened. Accordingly, while participation
in memorial acts and events is very important,
educators must move beyond this commemorative
function and help students develop deeper and more
profound understandings of the Holocaust. Indeed,
the classroom should become a space where young
people construct their own meanings of this complex
past and reflect more critically upon the present
memorial culture. Ultimately, such an approach will
allow students to think more deeply about the past in
order to better consider the significance that others
place upon it in the present.
This research reveals that students’ knowledge
and understanding of the Holocaust is often limited
and narrow. It could be argued, therefore, that empty
commemoration of a subject which often appears
as vague and ambiguous to young people has no
merit. As such, the findings of this research suggest
that perhaps one of the most important aims of
Holocaust education should be to deepen young
people’s knowledge and understanding of this history
in order to develop their own independent capacity
for critical thinking. Armed with such an education
it is possible that young people will be equipped to
construct meaning for themselves, weigh the truth
claims of others and critically evaluate (and potentially
support) commemoration of the Holocaust.
It is also notable that publication of this research
coincides with key recommendations in the Prime
Minister’s Holocaust Commission Report to establish
a ‘striking and prominent new National Memorial’
and a ‘World-Class Learning Centre’ in central
London (Cabinet Office 2015: 13), both exciting and
potentially powerful developments. In this regard
it is significant that, throughout their report, the
Commission noted their concern over many of the
emerging findings from our study and recognised the
need for deeper knowledge and understanding if this
memory is to be secure and meaningful.
In the light of our research findings, it is of
immense importance that the ‘Learning Centre’ and
the ‘National Memorial’ are regarded as symbiotic
developments and that critical attention is paid
www.ioe.ac.uk/holocaust