However, now high school students will also be taken to locations associated with “other World War II crimes” accompanied by a local guide, the document says. The list of new attractions also includes museums dedicated to so-called cursed soldiers who were involved in the murders of Jews.
The former prime minister accused the current government of Benjamin Netanyahu of “unforgivable” concessions to Polish officials, who “for many years tried in every possible way to hide and deny the participation of many Poles in the extermination of Jews”. Lapid described the new sites on the route as “places where history is falsified”. According to the former prime minister, the educational travel program will now promote Polish interpretation of the Holocaust. “I am ashamed of the Israeli government, which has abandoned its values and its principles,” summed up the leader of the opposition. Incidentally, it was Lapid who suspended school tourism in Poland a year earlier due to an attempt by Warsaw officials to change the structure of the curriculum and censor Holocaust evidence presented to young people.
Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kish responded strongly to Lapid’s criticism. The official claims that now the former leader is “trying to do what he does best – destroy international relations”.
The authorities’ plans have sparked fierce controversy in Israeli society. At the end of March, the heads of the foreign ministries of the two states met in Warsaw and discussed further cooperation, including the return of the Polish ambassador to Israel. At the same time, Zbigniew Rau and his Israeli colleague Eli Cohen decide to relaunch the school tours in a new show. The fact is that previously the parties fought over the protection of high school students during the trip. Poles did not like the fact that schoolchildren-tourists were accompanied by employees of the Shin-Bet special service. Officials said guards “marked weapons” when visiting memorials and, by their hostile appearance, created the false impression that “Poland is a dangerous place”. The Netanyahu government made concessions and allowed local law enforcement to provide security for the groups.
But the most controversial innovation has been a shift in the essence of educational travel. If initially the purpose of the visits was to broaden the horizons of schoolchildren on the Holocaust, now they will aim to “prevent the development of racism and xenophobia between Poles and Jews” and to destroy the stereotypes of peoples about each other. . So, in addition to concentration camps and memorials to those who died during the genocide, the travel program will include at least one attraction out of 32 recommended by Polish officials. Most of them are related to crimes committed by the Nazis in occupied Poland against local residents. Also, the list included the Ulm Family Museum, whose members hid eight Jews in their homes and paid for it with their lives. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz cites historians convinced that such examples were just a drop in the ocean compared to the number of Poles who helped the Nazis suppress the Jews. Polish-Canadian historian Jan Grabowski believes that such memorial complexes, distorting the history of the Holocaust, should be “bypassed at all costs”. According to him, the list of places to visit looks like “a Holocaust denier’s dream”.
Yair Lapid is sure that the concessions of the Israeli authorities will give Poland the opportunity to impose its interpretation of the Holocaust, denying the participation of Poles in it
Officials in Warsaw were so encouraged by the complacency of their Israeli colleagues that they invited school groups to visit museums in memory of the “cursed soldiers”. On Polish soil, members of the anti-communist movement are considered national heroes, but Holocaust scholars are convinced that some of them ruthlessly exterminated Jews during and after the war. Among the leaders of the “damned” was the famous Józef Kuras, or Ogien, meaning fire. In 2006, the Polish president decided to commemorate his “resistance efforts” and opened an official memorial to the controversial historical figure in Zakopane. Along with the program of visiting Israeli school children, the Poles plan to send their own children to the Jewish state. The places where the young “delegates” from Poland will go are not yet revealed.
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