March of the Living 2017
March of the Living 2017Yoni Kempinski

Ezra Youth Movement General Director Shaul de Malach on Monday called to cease sending Israeli high school students to Poland for educational and historical trips.

Currently, many senior high school students in Israel travel to Poland to visit the concentration camps. Educators beleive that the trips impart a sense of the enormity of the tragedy as well as a sense of responsibility for the future and an understanding of the need for a Jewish state.

However, a recently approved bill would criminalize mention of Poland's role in the Holocaust, as well as the term "Polish death camps. The law, which has been widely criticized by Jewish leaders as well as Israeli ministers and Knesset members, would apply both in and out of Poland.

In a letter to Poland's ambassador in Israel, de Malach wrote that "the law approved in the [Polish] Parliament sentences those who connect Poland with the Holocaust. Unfortunately, the Polish nation is connected to the Holocaust. Out of concerns for their safety, we call on our thousands of members and guides to avoid leaving on these educational trips. We do not know how Polish law enforcement will behave."

"We never made a contract with history, and as part of our trips to Poland, participants learn about that dark and horrible period in Israel's history and that of the entire world. Large sections are devoted to the Polish nation's role in the systematic murder of Jews. The camps [built on] Polish land, the guards who ignored what was happening, the village dwellers and those who cooperated with them [the Nazis] and stood by watching.

"Unfortunately, while the descendants of those murdered come to learn about the lives prematurely snuffed out on Polish land, the descendants of those who stood by and watched it happen now enjoy economic rewards [from the trips]. Those who will not recognize and take responsibility for their actions and their part in the Holocaust of the Jewish nation, cannot continue to enjoy the funds provided by the nation whom they harmed.

"We regret cancelling these educational trips, which connect the younger generation of Jews with the horrific acts regarding which we say 'Never again!' But since Poland's government has decided to legislate this harmful law, we are obligated to do take the appropriate educational and responsible steps for both our past and our future."

On Sunday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, agreeing to immediately start a dialogue between teams of the two countries in order to try to reach understanding on the issue.

Meanwhile, Education Minister Naftali Bennett (Jewish Home) has ordered Israeli schools to teach their students about the role European nations played in the Holocaust.

While the camps were German, built on Polish soil by the Nazis after they conquered the country, most of the populace complied, looting Jewish homes and murdering Jews in well-documented massacres such as the one in Jedwabne.