What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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Encountering representations of the Holocaust
positive attitudes and high levels of interest towards
educational engagement with the Holocaust.
In one of the two schools, which had an
extensive and well established programme of
teaching and learning about the Holocaust, interest
in this history was sufficiently strong that it had
influenced the courses of study that some students
had chosen to take:
Rupa: I disagree with that: ‘The Holocaust does not
really interest me’. I disagree with that because we learn
about a lot of stuff from this topic…
Kanta: What people went through. Why people were
suffering.
Rupa: It does interest me because in Year 8 we chose
between history and geography. So we knew what we
were going to learn about in Year 9 and Year 10. So
I chose history because the Holocaust does interest
me…
Interviewer: Was that one of the reasons you chose
history?
Rupa: Yeah.
Interviewer: Because you wanted to learn about the
Holocaust?
Rupa: Yeah
(Year 9 students, LON8).
In the same school, students were consistently
keen to emphasise that they understood the
Holocaust as a human tragedy with universal
ramifications. Students across all year groups
argued that the subject was important to them
for humanitarian reasons, and this was something
that transcended distinctions and putative tensions
between groups:
It was done against humans. I think it’s just innate
in us to feel emotions towards it, regardless of their
race or religion or anything … their age or when
it happened. I think as humans, when we actually
delve into history and see what happened, it always
just happens instinctively for you to feel an emotion.
towards it (Laboni, Year 12, LON8).
I think if we are empathetic people then we will be
interested to learn about it. Because even though
they are not Muslims or they are not Bengali, they
are Jews, they are still human beings and so we
probably will still be interested to learn about other
human beings and how they were treated
(Yasmina, Year 7, LON8).
So no matter where you are in the world you should
learn about that so … to ensure it doesn’t happen
again in your country. Like what’s to say that it won’t
happen again to you and in your country? So you
should learn about that and know why it’s wrong
(Chandni, Year 9, LON8).
In the second school, where the Holocaust only
received cursory attention based primarily on the use
of textbooks and film and where curricular exposure
was limited to one or two lessons in Year 9, students
were less emphatic. However, they still appeared
interested and aware of the subject’s historical
significance, and considered that it had an impact
on life now. Students who had already studied the
subject, but only briefly, were aware of the limitations
of what they had learned and spoke of their desire
to learn more. Hifaz (Year 9, WM2), for example,
said, ‘I need to do more into the subject, because
it’s interesting. There’s loads more to it’, while her
classmate, Juggan, added: ‘…to know what wrongs
have happened in the past to try not to make it
happen again’.
When asked to reflect on why they felt the
Holocaust might be significant, these students
articulated many of the same positions as those
put forward in other focus groups. Their primary
motivation was a desire to know more about
this past, which they hoped would prevent such
tragedies from happening in the future. Across both
schools, students expressed awareness of the
historical significance and complexity of the subject
and moral condemnation of the events. Students’
voices here certainly gave an impression that was
very far removed from the reluctance, hostility and/
or disinterest suggested by some of the available
literature in this field (see for example, Rutland 2010).
Prior ‘evidence’ of negativity among Muslim
students has always been based on small-scale
research or anecdotal evidence. The qualitative data
offered here is likewise drawn only from two schools
and of course cannot hope to offer a comprehensive
or authoritative account of all Muslim students’
attitudes towards learning about the Holocaust in
all of England’s schools. However, these findings do
support and extend those drawn from analysis of
the much larger and more representative sample of
students’ survey responses. While it is not possible
to claim on the basis of either that negative attitudes
towards learning about the Holocaust are entirely
absent among Muslim students – nor for that matter
among any group of students – they do very strongly
suggest that such attitudes are not widespread.
Among those authors who have remarked upon
reluctance to learning about the Holocaust within
Muslim communities, many predicate their argument
with reference to the current Israeli–Palestinian
conflict. The Holocaust and the Israeli–Palestinian
conflict are clearly distinct histories, although not
unrelated (Schweber 2006: 51). Within the context
of our study, while some of the students who took
part in focus-group interviews had strong views in
defence of the Palestinian cause and believed that
this could lead to inter-group tensions between