Israeli Youth Pilgrimages to Poland. Rationale and Polemics

The article, based on material collected as part of a project evaluating the pilgrimage trips to Poland by Israeli adolescents as part of the Holocaust curriculum, attempts to provide the reader with the background for these trips. In this context, the authors discuss the evolving national agenda in Israel, and the transition from experiencing independence to experiencing the Holocaust. The authors of the article stress that in the wake of the profound social changes that took place in Israeli society, the memory of the Holocaust gained new significance among the country’s national priorities. While a policy known as “the great silence” regarding the Holocaust prevailed among the first generation after statehood, the Holocaust has now become a factor that shaped the national ethos. In 1979, for the first time, the Ministry of Education commissioned two curricula dealing exclusively with the Holocaust. The article notes that the Holocaust and its lessons can be examined from three different perspectives: The first focuses on presenting the universal significance of the Holocaust and perceiving it as parallel to other cases of genocide. The second focuses on presenting the national significance of the Holocaust as a unique and unparalleled case of the Jewish People. The perception held by this approach is actually “the whole world is against us.” The third perspective is a synthesis of these two approaches. In this article, the authors note that the longstanding debate in Israeli society over the various methods for instilling the Holocaust and the journeys to Poland by adolescents expresses these three perspectives. (By the author)