What Do Students Know About the Holocaust?

REVIEW – DETAILED SURVEY – Slav Genocides Are Invisible in the British Classroom! Holocaust Supremacism Rules, as Does German Guilt Diffusion

This work is a seldom-done detailed analysis, this time of British children and teens, aged 11 to 18, and what they understand about the Holocaust. It was conducted by the University College London (UCL) Centre for Holocaust Education.

Authors Foster et al. sometimes allow the term “Holocaust” to include non-Jewish victims of the Nazis. However, as is obvious below, Holocaust education is so monotonically Judeocentric that it really does not matter.

REVEALING! THE NAZI GENOCIDE OF THE POLES IS ALMOST NONEXISTENT TO BRITISH CHILDREN AND TEENS

Very rarely do surveys even consider the millions of Poles (or other Slavs) who fell victim to genocidal murder by the Germans during WWII. This one does, a little, and the results are as predictable as they are pathetic.

Consider the most commonly used words, by students, for victims of the Holocaust (Figure 3.4, p. 45). Against the 6,176 mentions of Jews/Jewish, there are a staggering 15 (sic: fifteen) mentions of Poles.

Among those British students who understand the term “Holocaust” to include victims of the Third Reich other than just the Jews, only ~5% recognize Poles as part of the “Holocaust”. (Figure 5.1, p. 108). [How many of these ~5% are British Poles, or their peers?] In contrast, members of leftist-designated “victim groups” score much, much higher: Gays (~60%), disabled (~50%), Sinti/Roma (~40%), and Blacks (~20%). Even those with unspecified “mental health problems”, at ~8%, manage to score higher than the Poles (at ~5%). And the survey does not even touch on the millions of Belarussians and other non-Polish Slavic victims of the Nazis.

Clearly, the professed “inclusiveness” and “universality” of Holocaust education is a cynical joke. Let us finally end this farce. Genocide Recognition Equality Now!

THE DILUTION OF GERMAN GUILT HAS BEEN VERY SUCCESSFUL

Consider the most common words and phrases, referring to perpetrators of the Holocaust, as used by students (Figure 3.5, p. 76). Of these 6,094 descriptors, only 1,022 refer specifically to Germans.

The following direct quotes from this study are telling:

“Notably, free-text responses to the survey question 42, ‘Who was responsible?’ revealed that very few students assigned responsibility to the German people for the Holocaust (see Table 6.1). In total only 3.9 per cent of the 6,897 students who responded to survey question 42 ascribed responsibility directly to the Germans or Germany. Indeed, even if the four possible coding categories that refer in some measure to ‘Germans’ or ‘Germany’ (including, for example, ‘Hitler and the Germans’) is aggregated, the overarching total is only 9.0 per cent. Figure 6.7 shows that this trend was prevalent across all year groups.” (p. 156).

“Only a small number of students (fewer than 10 per cent) considered that the German people were complicit in, or responsible for, the persecution and mass murder of Jews and other victims groups. The vast majority of students separated ‘the Nazis’ from ‘the German people’. In terms of the latter, they were variously regarded as having had some role (often undetermined) in Hitler’s coming to power, not having ‘done anything’ in relation to the Holocaust (due to ignorance and/ or fear), and having offered help to Jews (most commonly specified in terms of hiding).” (p. 168).

THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON (UCL) CENTRE FOR HOLOCAUST EDUCATION PROMOTES HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM WHILE DENYING IT

Consider the following quotes [British spellings have mostly been changed to American spellings]:

“The Centre for Holocaust Education believes students should recognize the Jewish specificity of the Holocaust (the intent to murder all Jews, everywhere that the perpetrators could reach them, every last man, woman and child (Bauer 2002))…” (p. 11).

“The Centre seeks to differentiate other Nazi crimes from the Holocaust, not to produce a hierarchy of victims but, on the contrary, to better recognize and understand how these distinctive threads are also interwoven in a complex historical process. “ (p. 11).

Academese rhetoric aside, the question remains: Is there or is there not supposed to be a hierarchy of victims (with Jews, of course, at the top)? The Centre for Holocaust Education cannot have it both ways!

Note that there is no rational basis for having an (inferred) total genocide (of Jews) one iota more significant than “only” a partial genocide (of all non-Jews). Besides, some Armenians and Gypsies also argue that their respective peoples were targeted for eventual total annihilation. So are they “special” too? Finally, Hitler never attempted to literally kill every single Jew within even the boundaries of the Third Reich.

HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM CONTINUES TO DRIVE VICTIMHOOD COMPETITION. HOW COULD IT NOT?

The authors comment, “Within the academy ‘the traditional view that it [“the Holocaust”] was the genocide of the Jews alone’ (Niewyk and Nicosia 2000: 51) tends to hold sway, though there is some ‘debate’ between ‘those who reserve the term “Holocaust” specifically and exclusively for the Jewish victims of Nazism and those who opt for much wider inclusion of victim populations’ (Rosenfeld 2011: 58). These contrasting positions of exclusivity and inclusivity are much more highly charged outside academia however, where they are intensely politicized – not least because they often segue into contrasting claims over the uniqueness, universality and comparability of different victim group experiences under Nazism.” (p. 9).

HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM: NON-JEWISH VICTIMS CAN BE MENTIONED, BUT ONLY AS LONG AS JEWS AND THEIR HOLOCAUST REMAIN SPECIAL AND SET APART

In conclusion, authors Foster et al. say it all, “Around the world, one finds most national museums, for instance, clearly ascribing ‘the Holocaust’ to the fate of the Jews, even if many also seek to simultaneously recognize the suffering of non-Jewish victims. How this is managed differs from institution to institution, country to country, though this is by no means the only point of divergence.” (pp. 9-10).

Jan Peczkis

Photo is UCL Institute of Education by mattbuck [CC BY-SA 2.0]