What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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Collective conceptions of the Holocaust 47 Perpetrators of the Holocaust We have already identified the dominance of Hitler as a point of reference in students’ descriptions of the Holocaust, and Chapter 6 explores focus-group discussions to offer a detailed analysis of students’ understandings about his responsibility. Even so, such is Hitler’s significance in student accounts that it is helpful to take a look now at how he was most commonly positioned in even the briefest of their responses. Some students, especially among older year groups, purposefully problematised the idea that Hitler alone was responsible for the Holocaust, emphasising, for example, that: Hitler is the most popular figure associated with this … however other countries in europe also contributed greatly to the genocide (Year 11 student). However, in the descriptions provided by many others, Hitler appears to be awarded singular agency. Many, if not all, of the actions identified in Figure 3.6 were repeatedly attributed by students to Hitler himself. For example, the following answers were provided in response to survey question 30 (emphasis added): When Hitler sent many Jews to concentration camps where they were killed (Year 10 student). The Holocaust was when Hitler tortured and killed Jews (Year 11 student). It was when Adolf Hitler attempted to wipe out the Jews by committing Genocide (Year 10 student). When Hitler captured the Jews, put them in a concentration camp and gassed them (Year 10 student). Where Hitler took Jews to a concentration camp and said they were going to work but he killed them all because he didn’t like jews (Year 10 student). The holocaust was a period in time where the German leader Adolf Hitler discriminated against everyone who was different and tried to kill them all (Year 10 student). The holocaust was the part of the war when thousands of Jews died at the hands of Hitler.They were gassed in concentration camps and were buried in mass graves. The gas chambers where like showers and Hitler made them look nice (Year 7 student). There are a number of possible explanations for the central importance awarded to Hitler in students’ conceptions of the Holocaust. Adopting the language offered by Moscovici, we could argue that he operates as a useful personification of the Holocaust: that a single, vividly drawn figure is easier to conceptualise and hang your thoughts and interpretations upon than the complex and confronting reality of vast networks of shared culpability and complicity and of individuals positioned within – but not ultimately reducible to – wider structures of social, political and economic power. This conflation certainly appears to be active in the most extreme of all the students’ descriptions, in which the Holocaust is described precisely and exclusively as a person; specifically as ‘an evil man that wanted to rule the world and make it his own’ (Year 9 student). Again, the perspective shared by both Moscovici and Bartlett – and adopted here – is that ‘errors’ like this in students’ thinking, are not primarily a function of faulty information-processing or of inadequate knowledge-acquisition. Rather, they are very likely to reflect and represent individual interpretations of a wider social framing in which it is common and potentially advantageous to bestow a solitary figure with such enormous representational and explanatory power. Whatever the cause, the dominance of Hitler within students’ thinking about the Holocaust could significantly compromise both the depth and accuracy of their understanding. This contention is developed further in Chapter 6, but it is interesting to note here that – when given entirely free rein to ‘describe what the Holocaust was’ – in addition to the 2,781 references to Hitler across all 6,094 responses, students also made 6 references specifically to his moustache, but only 3 to the Einsatzgruppen, 8 to the SS and 8 to any form of collaboration with the Nazis. Actions undertaken during the Holocaust A related ‘cognitive shorthand’ or conceptual conflation also appears to be at work when we examine more closely the action – or actions – that students most commonly describe. Alongside the clear recognition that, essentially, the Holocaust involved the mass killing and attempted extermination of Jews, the second most prominent point of reference here is a noun rather than a verb: the ‘camps’ where victims, in students’ descriptions, were ‘sent’, ‘taken’, ‘captured’, ‘imprisoned’ or otherwise ‘held’. Indeed, in one Year 9 student’s description, the camp system itself becomes the principal action of the Holocaust: [The Holocaust was] the Nazi way of killing all Jews by concentrating them into fortified camps to do hard labour or be killed (emphasis added). www.ioe.ac.uk/holocaust
48 Collective conceptions of the Holocaust Figure 3.6 Most commonly used words and phrases which refer to actions undertaken during the Holocaust across all 6,094 student descriptions.
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CENTRE FOR HOLOCAUST EDUCATION What
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iv About the UCL Centre for Holocau
Page 7 and 8: vi Foreword by Sir Peter Bazalgette
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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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