What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

Collective conceptions of the Holocaust
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For most students ‘the camps’ appeared
to be understood and framed as places of
execution and murder. However, in some student
descriptions, the whole camp system – and
indeed the whole Holocaust – was presented
as though the enslavement and forced labour of
Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution was
its primary motivation and function.
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The chapter also argued that the emphasis placed
upon camps in students’ framing of the Holocaust
had potentially obscured other significant
dimensions of this history. For example, while
students’ descriptions included over 750 individual
references to the Nazis’ use of gasses as a means
to murder victims, only 65 references were made
to people being shot.
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Approximately 10 per cent of the students
surveyed for this study made reference to possible
causes of the Holocaust. Overwhelmingly, these
centred on Hitler and/or ‘the Nazis’ whose
hatred of Jews was typically presented by way of
explanation rather than as something in need of
explanation in itself.
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The chapter also specifically examined the
descriptions offered by a subsample of students
who reported that they had not (yet) learned
about the Holocaust at school. There was striking
consistency in the collective conceptions of these
students and those who had been taught about
the Holocaust. This was interpreted as strong
indication that students’ overarching conceptions
of the Holocaust – as distinct from precise
knowledge content – are in large part formed
prior to and independent of taught content
received in schools.
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It was very rare among survey responses for
students to describe the Holocaust in such a
manner that implied the term had a generic
meaning broadly equivalent to ‘mass murder’ or
‘genocide’. It was also relatively uncommon for
students to emphasise any recognition that the
Nazis intended to eliminate all Jews everywhere.
However, the likelihood of students including
such a recognition in their description increased
considerably with age.
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The students who took part in this study
commonly recognised the limitations of their
knowledge of this history. Only 12.6 per cent
described that they knew ‘lots’ about the subject
and 68.6 per cent suggested they would like to
learn more. Students’ confidence in answering
individual knowledge-based questions increased
with age and in relation to the accuracy of their
answers. Broadly speaking, those who appeared
most knowledgeable about this history were most
confident in their answers.
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However, the chapter also reported that there
were a number of areas of understanding in
which students’ self-reported confidence regularly
outstripped their accuracy. For example, 12 times
as many students confidently believed they knew
the likely consequence of a member of the military
or police refusing a direct order to kill than were
actually able to answer the question correctly.
www.ioe.ac.uk/holocaust