What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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Collective conceptions of the Holocaust 53 The Holocaust was a terrible, problematic trauma that happened many years ago but is still known to this very day (Year 9 student). The Evil atrocities of one Nation that changed the land scape of the World we live in today (Year 10 student). Holocaust was something what happened in the past. But it was so around the world, that even now people still talk about it. (Year 10 student). I think that the Holocaust was a terrible event that took place near the 1930s where the Nazi’s killed innocent Jew[s] all around Europe. Germans hated the Jews and so did Hitler, they decided to kill the Jews in many ways by shooting them, torturing them, concentration camps where they were killed with gas without knowing and shoving them in ghettos. Even today there are not many Jews around because the populations dropped back during the world wars (Year 9 student). Although they did not give specific dates, some students implied that the Holocaust really ‘began’ prior to 1933 and regularly cited both Germany’s loss in the First World War and Hitler’s rise to power as salient points of reference within even very short accounts. Indeed, a small number of students across all age groups explicitly stated that the Holocaust occurred before as well as during the Second World War. As the Year 9 student responses reproduced below suggest, this might in part be explained if and where students understand ‘the Holocaust’ in a manner akin to broader notions of antisemitism: The holocaust started many years before world war 2 and it was basically where the citizens of towns and countries discriminat[ed] against the jews. After many years Hitler came to power and killed many of them. This was one of the most biggest events of the holocaust so many people now remember that as the holocaust (Year 9 student). The Holocaust, was [an] act against the Jews. It started way before Hitler, but Hitler when he became in power, blew up the spark [against] the jews starting with laws and then leading to gas chambers or death chambers and concentration camps like Auschwitz (Year 9 student). In more than 40 further student responses, the Holocaust is described as ‘having something to do with’ or ‘happening during’ the First World War. However, in many of these same accounts students also reference Hitler and/or refer to dates within the 1940s, so this would seem to denote a much wider confusion concerning the chronology of the twentieth century rather than of the Holocaust per se. It is entirely understandable – and indeed completely appropriate – for the Second World War to feature so prominently in students’ collective conceptions of the Holocaust. However, if we look at the detail of their responses through the theoretical lens established at the start of this chapter, there is evidence that certain forms of understanding can be compromised where two potentially distinct schemata – here ‘the Holocaust’ and ‘the Second World War’ as separate but closely related entities – lose their clarity and become unwittingly intertwined. On one level, such entanglement might explain some of the most striking ostensible confusions in students’ accounts. In a number of cases, a conceptual vocabulary related to students’ wider schemata for the Second World War, or for war more generally, appears to have been uncomfortably tacked on to or incorporated within their framing of the Holocaust. Among the more obvious examples of this in students’ descriptions are the 21 references to ‘bombing’ noted in Figure 3.6 including the repeated suggestion that Jews, like Britons during the Blitz, were murdered by the deployment of Nazi bombs. Here are some responses to survey question 30: Where many jewish people were killed by german bombers (Year 9 student). The holocaust is about where jews where bombed by gasses (Year 9 student). Where the Nazis destroyed the jewish race by bombing them or gassing them (Year 10 student). I think the Holocaust was when the Germans killed a lot of Jews by bombing their country (Year 11 student). There is also, arguably, a related fusion and confusion evident in some students’ thinking on the movement of child victims of war. As is illustrated in the responses below, tentative and incomplete knowledge of victims’ deportation by train to concentration camps, the Kindertransport rescue of Jewish children to Britain and British children’s wartime evacuation to the countryside can all appear to become entangled, if not entirely conflated, especially in younger students’ minds: Was the holocaust a train that took jews out of Germany to help them? (Year 7 student). I think holocaust was something that helped children in the war go to the country side. This made them a bit safer. (Year 7 student). www.ioe.ac.uk/holocaust
54 Collective conceptions of the Holocaust Figure 3.9 Most commonly used words and phrases which refer to a timeframe for the Holocaust across all 6,094 student descriptions. The Holocaust was when Jews got killed and children had to go to kindertransport (only if they had the money) (Year 7 student). The holocaust was around in world war 2, it was when children had to immigrate somewhere else due to the war (Year 7 student). I think it was when they went to war and the kids got evacuated (Year 8 student). The holocaust was a period of time when jewish children were ridiculed because of their beliefs. They were sent away to POW (Prisoner of War) camp or sent to Britain for reasons of their safety (Year 7 student). The holocaust was when hitler and the other germans decided that they would put jews in death camps because they wanted everyone [to] be like them. Evacuees from England had to stay in different places because England was being bombed. In the end all the fighting stopped because the English had won (Year 7 student). When children were taken out of their country for safety and placed in another country (Year 9 student). Holocaust was like a big evacuation for the jews. They had to go and live in ghetto’s and the ghettos would then be surrounded by walls with glass on the top (Year 9 student). On another level, the potential consequence of these two unconsciously entangled schemata is also evident where students implicitly drew on their understanding of one to explain or interpret the other. This is illustrated in a number of different ways across student responses, for example, where the war is interpreted as a function of the Holocaust (emphasis added): The German army led by Adolf Hitler are killing a lot of Jews so other countries go to war with them and defeated them then Adolf Hitler committed suicide (Year 7 student). The Holocaust was what started the second world war (Year 13 student). The Holocaust was a time period in the 20th century where the nazis (under Hitler’s control) wanted to destroy the jews/disabled/homophobic and put them in concentration camps … Hitler also wanted to create the Aryan race … Britain went to war with Germany because of this (Year 9 student).
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CENTRE FOR HOLOCAUST EDUCATION What
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What do students know and understan
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iv About the UCL Centre for Holocau
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vi Foreword by Sir Peter Bazalgette
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viii Foreword by Professor Yehuda B
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Page 13 and 14: 2 Executive summary ■■ Many stu
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Page 17 and 18: Olivia Hemingway, 2014
Page 19 and 20: 8 Introduction ■■ What forms of
Page 21 and 22: 10 Introduction the fate of the Jew
Page 23 and 24: 12 Introduction two reasons here in
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Page 37 and 38: 26 Methodology were asked questions
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Page 41 and 42: 30 Methodology Table 2.2 Breakdown
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Emile Holba, 2014
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106 Who were the victims? students
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108 Who were the victims? Figure 5.
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118 Who were the victims? the war,
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120 Who were the victims? (Longeric
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122 Who were the victims? many of J
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126 Who were the victims? asking
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128 Who were the victims? unending
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130 Who were the victims? different
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132 Who were the victims? the Nazi
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134 Who were the victims? and Read
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136 Who were the victims? many stud
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204 Considerations and recommendati
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Appendix 1: The Survey 225 Appendix
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Appendix 1: The Survey 227 How do y
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Appendix 1: The Survey 229 Word qui
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Appendix 1: The Survey 231 Explorin
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Appendix 1: The Survey 233 Do you r
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Appendix 1: The Survey 235 42. Who
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Appendix 1: The Survey 237 The Nazi
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Appendix 1: The Survey 239 64. What
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Appendix 1: The Survey 241 71. If y
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Appendix 1: The Survey 243 Returnin
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Appendix 1: The Survey 245 87. Have
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Appendix 2: Attitudinal scales used
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Appendix 3: Coding frameworks for f
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References 259 Assmann, A. (2010)
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References 261 Carr, E.H. (1964) Wh
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References 263 Emler, N. and Ohana,
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References 265 Howitt, D. and Crame
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References 267 Levstik, L.S. (2000)
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References 269 Resnick, L.B. (1989)
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References 271 Snyder, T. (2009)
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References 273 Yeager, E., Anderson
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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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