What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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Collective conceptions of the Holocaust 41 Concentration camps (Year 9 student). Hitler killing Jews (Year 9 student). The holocaust 1 was disgraceful and almost unbelievable (Year 9 student). It was something to do with Hitler (Year 7 student). Hell on earth, people were dying in gas chambers and burnt (Year 10 student). The remembrance of the millions of people who died in the nazi camps for being different (Year 10 student). The targeted genocide of Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies and others deemed ‘undesirable’ by the Nazi regime (Year 12 student). The Holocaust was during World War Two where Jews were blamed for losing the war, therefore they were kept hostage all over Germany. Many people did not realise the conditions they were living in (Year 8 student). I think that it was a terrible affair which took place in an unfortunate time for my people and could have been avoided if people thought through a little more as to who they follow and what they are doing. It was when the Nazis led by Hitler decided to attempt to kill all Jews in their territory (Year 10 student). Table 3.1 Summary of student responses to survey question 30 ‘Please can you describe in one or two sentences what you think the Holocaust was’ Year group Number of responses Range of number of words used Average number of words used Year 7 533 1–74 19 Year 8 854 1–138 20 Year 9 2,299 1–245 20 Year 10 1,074 1–258 20 Year 11 472 1–92 22 Year 12/13 862 1–197 22 Totals 6,094 1–258 20 1 Throughout this chapter, the spelling used within students’ responses has been edited for clarity only. Individuals’ use of capital letters – or otherwise – for terms such as ‘the Holocaust’ appears as in their original text. The holocaust was a historical moment when the Nazis persecuted the Jews and ended up sending them to death camps and killing them. The holocaust was in 3 stages. The 1st one was the ghettos, 2nd one was killing the jews in public places and sending them to concentration camps and then the 3rd and final one was the ‘Final Solution’ which was the Nazis sending the jews and other types of people like gypsies to death camps (Year 11 student). It is important to emphasise that question 30 of the survey, did not ask students to demonstrate everything they knew about the Holocaust; it only invited them to provide a short description. Therefore, the data presented here is not intended as a reliable measure of whether or not students know specific things. Instead, the chapter reports the ‘knowledge’ that students’ themselves chose to prioritise in just one or two sentences as a basis from which to identify the most commonly shared conceptions of the Holocaust. The descriptions provided by students ranged from single-word answers to short paragraphs of up to 250 words (as summarised in Table 3.1) and contained a wide variety of descriptive, evaluative and ‘factual’ content as is also evident in just the handful of examples already quoted. Across all 6,094 responses, this translates into an enormous amount of complex data. Nonetheless, through close textual analysis of commonly recurring words, phrases and related terms, it is possible to discern a clear shared, core content. Table 3.2 summarises the ten most commonly occurring words and phrases used within student descriptions across individual year groups. Although caution must always be taken with any attempt to quantify what are essentially interpretative phenomena – in this case, people’s words – it is striking to note that the three most commonly occurring words or phrases remain constant across all year groups. As Table 3.2 clearly demonstrates, students were, by some margin, most likely to make at least one reference to ‘Jews’, ‘Jewish people’ and/or ‘the Jewish ‘faith’ in their descriptions. The second most likely term to be referenced was ‘killing’, while ‘Hitler’ was the third. Indeed, in a number of students’ responses, these were the only individual terms referenced, for example: Where Hitler killed lots of jewish people (Year 7 student). When jews were killed by hitler (Year 9 student). Hitler had the jews killed (Year 11 student). www.ioe.ac.uk/holocaust
42 Collective conceptions of the Holocaust Table 3.2 Approximate frequency counts (freq) of the 10 most commonly appearing words or phrases by year group Year 7 Rank (n=533) Freq Year 8 (n =854) Freq Year 9 (n=2,299) Freq Year 10 (n=1,074) Freq Year 11 (n=472) Freq Year 12/13 (n=862) Freq 1 Jews/ Jewish 472 Jews/ Jewish 862 Jews/ Jewish 2,346 Jews/ Jewish 1,088 Jews/ Jewish 498 Jews/ Jewish 2 Killed 302 Killed 450 Killed 1,258 Killed 638 Killed 271 Killed 384 3 Hitler 232 Hitler 402 Hitler 1,032 Hitler 522 Hitler 230 Hitler 365 4 Camps 167 Camps 293 Camps 741 Camps 336 Nazis 158 Nazis 358 5 Nazis a 130 Nazis 211 Nazis 697 Nazis 303 Camps 131 Second 214 World War 6 Second World War 125 Second World War 164 Second World War 424 Second World War 178 Million/6 million 92 Camps 205 7 Sent or Taken 98 Sent or Taken 157 Sent or Taken 355 Million/6 million 8 Germans b 91 Gassed 154 Germans 336 Sent or Taken 9 Gassed c 68 Germans 143 Million/ 6 million 10 Religion d 43 Million/6 million 317 Race/racism/ ethnicity 934 161 Germany 88 Germany 198 156 Second World War 146 Race/racism/ ethnicity 78 Genocide 196 77 Million/ 6 million 92 Gassed 300 Homosexuals 133 Homosexuals 60 Race/racism/ 153 ethnicity a Count includes references to: ‘Nazis’, ‘Nazi party’, ‘Nazi Germans’ and ‘Nazi regime’. b Count includes ‘German people’ c Count includes all references to ‘gas’ and ‘gassing’ (including ‘gas chambers’ and ‘gas showers’) d Count includes references to ‘religious’ and ‘beliefs’ 161 Figure 3.2 Component parts of students’ descriptions of the Holocaust by year group (percentage of students) 100 90 Percentage of students 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 Action Victims Perpetrators Timeframe Scale Location Cause ■ Year 7 ■ Year 8 ■ Year 9 ■ Year 10 ■ Year 11 ■ Year 12 ■ Year 13
Page 1 and 2: CENTRE FOR HOLOCAUST EDUCATION What
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References 259 Assmann, A. (2010)
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References 269 Resnick, L.B. (1989)
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Centre for Holocaust Education UCL
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What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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