What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

Encountering representations of the Holocaust
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4.
Encountering representations of the Holocaust in
classrooms and beyond
Key questions
1. What is the focus of the current chapter?
2. Where do students encounter the Holocaust both within and outside school?
3. What value do students place upon learning about the Holocaust in school?
4. What impact does first-hand survivor testimony have on students’ understanding of the Holocaust?
5. What impact does The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas have on students’ understanding of the
Holocaust?
6. What do students think and feel about encountering atrocity images of the Holocaust?
Key findings
1. Of all the students surveyed, 28.5 per cent said they first encountered the Holocaust in primary
school. Among students in Years 10 and above, more than 85 per cent had learned, or thought
they had learned, about the Holocaust in school.
2. The majority of students had positive attitudes towards learning about the Holocaust.
Over 70 per cent who had already learned about the Holocaust said they wanted to learn more.
3. There was broad consensus on the importance of the subject, with 83 per cent of students saying
that all students should learn about the Holocaust at school.
4. Attitudes towards learning about the Holocaust appeared broadly stable across gender, year group
and religious affiliation. In contrast to regularly voiced concerns, Muslim students’ attitudes did not
appear to differ significantly from those of the full cohort taking part in the research.
5. Students with first-hand experience of hearing survivor testimony were overwhelmingly positive
about such encounters. Many emphasised that meeting and hearing from an individual survivor
helped make this history feel ‘more real’.
6. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was the most-read book and the most-watched film about the
Holocaust among students. Focus-group interviews suggest that this narrative can reinforce an
inaccurate perception of German ignorance of the Holocaust.
7. Young people are viewing atrocity images of the Holocaust even when they are not shown these
images in school. Students generally appeared to respond appropriately to such images and
described their value in helping them to ‘make sense’ of the Holocaust.
What is the focus of the current
chapter?
In a 1989 article, ‘Art and the Holocaust: Trivializing
memory’, Holocaust survivor, activist and writer
Elie Wiesel (1989: no pagination) reflects upon both
the impossibility and the necessity of communicating
the ‘monstrous meaning’ of the Holocaust beyond
those who actually experienced it first-hand:
The truth of Auschwitz remains hidden in its ashes.
Only those who lived it in their flesh and in their
minds can possibly transform their experience into
knowledge. Others, despite their best intentions,
can never do so. Such, then, is the victory of
the executioner: by raising his crimes to a level
beyond the imagining and understanding of men,
he planned to deprive his victims of any hope of
sharing their monstrous meaning with others.
www.ioe.ac.uk/holocaust