The content of essays written by randomly selected samples of 1500 U.S. and 500 British secondary students on the topic "What have I learned about Adolf Hitler?" were partitioned into theme-related assertions and analyzed. An experimental group of 150 9th- and 11th-grade male students who had studied the Holocaust also contributed papers that were compared with those in a control sample of U.S. males. General awareness of the meaning of the Holocaust was relatively high for both British and American students, although the former possessed a broader range of knowledge of historical phenomena associated with the event. Students who had studied the Holocaust had a more sophisticated understanding of the topic. Questionnaires soliciting views on curricular issues pertinent to the Holocaust were also completed by 84 voluntarily participating U.S. teachers. Findings suggest that Holocaust curricula should be introduced at the ninth grade and should stress the interplay of psychological and historical factors in genocide within a value-oriented framework. (RM)