Portrayals of the Holocaust in English history textbooks, 1991–2016: continuities, challenges and concerns

ABSTRACT

This study examines portrayals of the Holocaust in a sample of 21 secondary school history textbooks published in England between 1991 and 2016. Evaluated against internationally recognized criteria and guidelines, the content of most textbooks proved very problematic. Typically, textbooks failed to provide clear chronological and geographical frameworks and adopted simplistic Hitler-centric, perpetrator-oriented narratives. Furthermore, textbooks paid limited attention to pre-war Jewish life, the roots of antisemitism, the complicity of local populations and collaborationist regimes, and the impact of the Holocaust on people across Europe. Based on these critical findings, the article concludes by offering initial recommendations for textbook improvement.

KEYWORDS:

• Holocaust education
• textbook research
• history teaching
• curriculum
• history textbooks

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Professor Stuart Foster is Executive Director of both the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education and the First World War Centenary Battlefield Tours Programme. His research interests include the teaching, learning, and assessment of history, Holocaust education, and the study of school history textbooks and curriculum, nationally and internationally. He has written more than 50 scholarly articles and book chapters focused on teaching and learning history, and he has authored or co-authored six books. His most recent co-authored publication was the ground-breaking national study, What Do Students Know and Understand about the Holocaust? (2016).

Dr Eleni Karayianni works as a Research and Evaluation Officer at the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education. She is currently involved in the dissemination of the Centre’s latest research to educational practitioners and also participates in the design of future research. She holds a PhD in History Education awarded by the UCL Institute of Education in 2012. Her research interests focus on issues of national and international identity formation in history education. She also has wide teaching experience at both primary and university level.

Notes

1. Post 14, students have the right to choose whether or not to continue their study of history during the two-year GCSE course (age 14–16 years). Currently, about 30% of all 16-year-olds take GCSE history. Beyond 16 years of age, students may elect to study “Advanced Level” (A/AS/A2 level) history. Approximately 6% of all students study history at Advanced Level.

2. Pearce, Holocaust Consciousness, 83.

3. At the time of the publication of this report, the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education was named the Holocaust Education Development Programme (HEDP). The HEDP was established in 2008. It was awarded Centre status by the Institute of Education in 2012 and subsequently renamed the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education in 2015.

4. Pettigrew et al., Teaching about the Holocaust, 47.

5. Carrier et al., International Status of Education, 21.

6. Pingel, The European Home.

7. Barton and Levstik, Teaching History.

8. Apple and Christian-Smith, Politics of the Textbook.

9. The many ways in which students and teachers understand, negotiate, and transform textual material is a complex process and rarely is textbook content simply accepted, absorbed, and then regurgitated by learners. Thus, we cannot assume that what is “in” the text is actually taught, nor can we assume that what is taught is actually learned. Teachers and students transform text material when they employ it in classrooms (see Apple, “Regulating the Text,” and Foster and Crawford, What Shall We Tell).

10. Marsden, The School Textbook, 57.

11. Foster and Burgess, “Problematic Portrayals”; Wenzeler, “Presentations of the Holocaust.”

12. A thorough literature search in libraries and electronic resources found a list of 37 relevant textbook studies internationally that were published in English and focused on National Socialism and/or the Holocaust. See Foster and Karayianni, “Research into Textbook Portrayals.”

13. Carrier et al., International Status of Education.

14. Bowe and Ball, with Gold, Reforming Education, 21.

15. This theory encompasses the notion that powerful interest groups create educational policy and policy texts. Indeed, many textbook theorists and analysts have repeatedly stated that textbooks should be seen as products of the dominant culture and as representations of political, cultural, social, and ideological impositions, battles, and compromises. See, for example, Apple, “Regulating the Text”; Apple, Official Knowledge; Apple and Christian-Smith, Politics of the Textbook.; De Castell et al., Language, Authority and Criticism; Issitt, “Reflections on the Study of Textbooks”; Nicholls and Foster, “Portrayal of the Soviet Role in WWII”; Williams, Culture and Society. However, it was not the focus of this study to determine whose interests and ideologies were prominent in identified textbooks.

16. Westbury, “Teaching as a Reflective Practice,” 15.

17. Bowe and Ball, with Gold, Reforming Education.

18. Apple, “The Culture and Commerce of the Textbook”; Crawford and Foster, “The Political Economy”; Foster and Crawford, What Shall We Tell; Issitt, “Reflections on the Study of Textbooks.”

19. Apple, “The Political Economy of Text Publishing”; Wenzeler, “Presentations of the Holocaust.”

20. Wasburn, “Accounts of Slavery,” 471.

21. Loewen, Teaching What Really Happened.

22. Witschonke, “A ‘Curtain of Ignorance’,” 147.

23. The IHRA is an intergovernmental body supported by 31 member states whose purpose is to place political and social leaders’ support behind the need for Holocaust education, remembrance, and research both nationally and internationally. See International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, Teaching Guidelines.

24. Carrier et al., International Status of Education.

25. Nicholls, “Philosophical Underpinnings,” 31; Nicholls, “Beyond the National and the Transnational,” 92.

26. Krippendorff, Content Analysis, xxi.

27. Crawford and Foster, War, Nation, Memory; Foster, “Struggle for American Identity”; Foster, “The British Empire and Commonwealth”; Foster, “Whose History?”; Foster and Crawford, What Shall We Tell; Foster and Burgess, “Problematic Portrayals”; Foster and Karayianni, “La Imagen De Los Pueblos Arabe-Islamicos”; Foster and Morris, “Arsenal of Righteousness?”; Foster and Nicholls, “Interpreting the Past, Serving the Present”; Foster and Nicholls, “America’s Role in World War II”; Foster and Rosch, “Teaching World War I from Multiple Perspectives”; Karayianni, “European History and Identity”; Foster et al., “Prospects for Teaching”; Foster, “Constructing the Past”; Bourdillon, “History and Social Sciences”; Weinbrenner, “Methodologies of Textbook Analysis”; Pingel, UNESCO Guidebook on Textbook Research; Crawford, “Researching the Ideological and Political Role”; Mikk, Textbook; Nicholls, “Methods in School Textbook Research.”

28. See, for example, Sleeter and Grant, “Race, Class, Gender”; Hein and Selden, Censoring History; Mirkovic and Crawford, “Teaching History”; Nicholls, School History Textbooks.

29. Bărbulescu et al., “The Holocaust as Reflected”; Firer, “The Holocaust in History Textbooks”; Frankl, “Holocaust Education in the Czech Republic”; Frohnert, “We Want to Learn from the Past”; Michaels, “Holocaust Education in the ‘Black Hole of Europe’”; Witschonke, “A ‘Curtain of Ignorance’.”

30. Glaser, “The Constant Comparative Method,” 436.

31. Crawford, “History of the Right”; Dickinson, School Subject Teaching; Foster, “Politics, Parallels, and Perennial Curriculum Questions”; Haydn, “History”; Phillips, History Teaching, Nationhood and the State; Sylvester, “Change and Continuity.”

32. One of the central educational policies of the current Conservative government is to promote the growth of secondary school “academies.” In 2016, almost two thirds of secondary schools were academies and it is expected that this number will grow. Significantly, academies are not compelled to follow the National Curriculum. It is, therefore, very likely that in future years the National Curriculum will lose its influence.

33. Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, “Schemes of Work.”

34. Verschaffel and Wils, “History Education,” 2.

35. Karayianni found that textbooks published after the National Curriculum 2007 had increased content on Britain, with topics such as the health care system, trade unions, Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, and the Edwardian “golden summer” commonly featured. She also reported an increased tendency to connect Britain with the world and the inclusion of new world history topics such as the Civil Rights Movement in the USA, the Depression, Mao’s China, intervention in Afghanistan, terrorism, and emigration. As a result of these efforts, European history received even less attention than in previous textbooks. See Karayianni, “European History and Identity,” 232.

36. Hector, “Teaching the Holocaust in England.”

37. Pearce, Holocaust Consciousness.

38. The textbooks that were published after Curriculum 2000 and the publication of the QCA Scheme of Work pay increased attention to the topic of resistance – a topic that was included in the guidance. However, it is difficult to determine whether textbook authors were influenced by the Scheme or whether this was a result of other factors.

39. Pearce, Holocaust Consciousness, 65.

40. Ibid.

41. Kinloch, “Review Essay,” 44.

42. Russell, Teaching the Holocaust, 8.

43. IHRA, “Teaching Guidelines.”

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid.

46. Ibid.

47. Of the four books whose authors did not ascribe primary responsibility to Hitler, typically they focused in general terms on Nazi actions against the Jews without directly mentioning Hitler in the main narrative (although one does recognize the importance of Hitler’s views in an accompanying source). Two of these four books (E and G) were written by the same author, Josh Brooman.

48. Book L suggests some reasons why Germans supported Hitler by including reference to Germany’s problems during the 1930s.

49. Of the two books that offered any detail, one simply states, “The German SS forces were responsible for the killing of approximately six million Jews in Europe during the Holocaust” (Book L, 2001, p. 156), while the other offers a more detailed explanation of how the SS as an “elite group of committed Nazis” were central to the organization and management of the industrial killing of Jews.

50. An additional two books, authored by Brooman (E and G), referred to “Special Action Groups” rather than the Einsatzgruppen directly.

51. For example, Goebbels is referenced in only five books, Goering in four, Speer and Bormann in two, and Eichmann, Heydrich, and von Ribbentrop are individually referred to in only one book.

52. It is worth noting that Book A (1993) provides an extract “from the memoirs of Rudolf Hess, Commandant of Auschwitz” (p. 44), when the correct spelling of his name should be Höss or Hoess. This mistake confuses Rudolf Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz, with Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy in the Nazi Party in the 1930s and early 1940s.

53. IHRA, “Teaching Guidelines.”

54. Other death camps are mentioned by far fewer textbooks: Chelmo by six textbooks, Majdenek and Treblinka by five, Belzec and Sobibor by four, Dachau by two, and Maly Trostinets by one textbook. The reference to concentration camps is even scarcer, with only two textbooks referring to Buchenwald and Bergen Belsen.

55. Foster et al., What Do Students Know, 197.

56. IHRA, “Teaching Guidelines.”

57. Note that the number of 20 concentration camps represents a significant error in this textbook. The historical record clearly illustrates that from 1933 until 1945 the Nazis created thousands of concentration camps. See, for example, Gilbert, Atlas of the Holocaust.

58. Cesarani and Levine, “Bystanders” to the Holocaust; Hayes and Roth, Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies; Klee et al., “The Good Old Days”; Marrus, The Holocaust in History; Matthäus, “Agents of the Final Solution”; Stone, Histories of the Holocaust.

59. Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust; Herbert, National Socialist Extermination Policies; Lower, Nazi Empire Building; Snyder, Bloodlands.

60. Aly, Hitler’s Beneficiaries; Bajohr, Aryanisation in Hamburg; Bankier, The Germans and the Final Solution; Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution; Friedlander, “The T4 Killers”; Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners; Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders; Kershaw, Hitler, the Germans and the Final Solution.

61. Broszat, The Hitler State; Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship; Stone, Histories of the Holocaust.

62. Supple, “Teaching of the Nazi Holocaust.”

63. Pettigrew et al., Teaching about the Holocaust, 8.

64. Foster et al., What Do Students Know, 190.

65. Ibid., 1.

66. Pettigrew et al., Teaching about the Holocaust; Foster et al., What Do Students Know.