Students from Rotenberg High School in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat HaSharon have returned from a heritage trip to Poland where they visited concentration camps and learned about the pre-holocaust Jewish life of the region.

The group toured the Auschwitz-Birkenau, Maidanek, and Treblinka death camps, as well as mass graves in forests where thousands of Jews met their death. The students were accompanied on parts of their trip by Auschwitz survivor Esther Manheim, whose stories and vivid depictions of Jewish life in the Holocaust and in the camps deeply touched the young participants.

Israeli high school students from Ramat HaSharon at a Nazi death camp in Poland, Sept. 2008

Photo: Rotenberg High School

On their own initiative, the students produced and held three memorial ceremonies, which served as a means to express the strong feelings and emotions that were being stirred via the encounter with this dark chapter of Jewish history.

Gili Malik, the Rotenberg High School principal, said that these journeys to the camps convey the meaning of the Holocaust stronger than any history class or written account. Despite the sharp rise in airfares, Malik was determined to enable any 12th grade who so desired to join the trip. She succeeded in doing so by raising funds from the local municipality and private sources in Ramat HaSharon.

Parents and teachers praised the trip and spoke of its educational value, noting that it matured the students and aroused within them a great interest in the period of the Holocaust.

Some political figures, such as former Minister of Education Shulamit Aloni (Meretz party), oppose tours of Israeli youth to the Nazi death camps, saying that they breed "nationalistic" feelings amongst the youth.

Student Council chairman Michal Levita, who participated in the trip, wrote the following in her diary:

"We are here just like they were, with friends, parents, bags and things. But the difference between us is that we will leave here alive, while they left behind only a dream and thoughts. We will speak of their horrors and hide nothing, rather we will remember what was here and who was here. We will guard these memories."