What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

Collective conceptions of the Holocaust
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Figure 3.11 Most commonly used words and phrases which refer to potential causes of the Holocaust
across all 6,094 student descriptions.
Other students did attempt to relate the events of
the Holocaust to wider socioeconomic and political
conditions. Explanations offered by these students
were regularly framed with reference to Germany’s
economic downturn and the loss of the First
World War.
‘Antisemitism’ was referred to on 61 separate
occasions. Again, students’ understanding of
anti-Jewish prejudice, of various articulations of
antisemitism and of the Nazi Party’s racial ideology
will be explored in much more detail in Chapter 5.
However, it is worth noting now that even here,
in some accounts, Hitler himself is held responsible
as ‘the man who began antisemitism’ or who
‘created antisemitic views’ (extracts from Year 9
student responses).
A similar uncertainty or confusion to that
identified regarding the basis on which victims of
the Holocaust were targeted is also at play here.
For example, some students described the
Holocaust as a function of religious intolerance:
The Holocaust was where germans killed a lot of
jews for their religion (Year 9 student).
Where Hitler put all the jews in concentration camps
and the ghettoes. He made all the jews work and he
would kill the jews as well. All because they were a
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