HaRav Shlomo Aviner is Rosh Yeshiva of Aterett Yerushalayim
Traveling to the death camps in Poland is, quite simply, not a good thing to do. Any one of the following reasons should be sufficient to deter a person from doing so.
1. It is forbidden to leave Israel, unless one is:
a. Going on a temporary trip necessary to earning a living
b. Marrying, or
c. Performing a mitzvah.
Visiting a death camp is not considered a mitzvah, whether from the Torah or due to a rabbbinic tenet. And it is not mentioned among the hundreds of thousands of paragraphs found in halakhic works written in recent generations.
2. One should not financially support the Poles, who collaborated with the Nazis in establishing the extermination camps, and even persecuted the Jews themselves many times. Shall murderers benefit from their deeds?
3. The trip is so expensive that often only the wealthy students can afford to go on it and others must apply for grants. It is scandalous that something associated with the educational system should create a division between rich and poor.
Now one might say: If this is true, how should we remember the Holocaust? The answer is simple: books, pictures, films, Yad Vashem and similar memorial sites. One might also say: That's all well and good, but I’ll miss out on the experience of a live visit to a death camp. The answer is simple hold a live meeting with one of the Holocaust survivors and hear directly from him or her what they experienced.
Still, one might argue: “But visiting a death camp is an infinitely more powerful experience than talking to a Holocaust survivor." That argument is truly puzzling. Is an experience with inanimate objects really more powerful than one involving a living, breathing person?! Quite the contrary. Common sense and untainted morality dictate that all of the money spent on this trip should instead be donated to Holocaust survivors who are still suffering, to this very day, from the terrible open wounds to their bodies and souls.
It's true that many survivors were successfully absorbed in our country and became its builders, but others are still suffering. Our country does a tremendous amount for these survivors, but it has not succeeded in solving all of their problems. The State Comptroller's report from 2007 in fact found fault with the way survivors are dealt with. And even though, since then, their situation has vastly improved, there are still many who suffer from a lack of food and medical services.
In sum, despite the State's prodigious assistance, we have not succeeded in answering all of the survivors’ needs, especially since the Law of Assistance to Holocaust Survivors applies only to those who arrived in Israel before 5713 (1953). It's obvious that some of those who came afterwards are also suffering greatly.
The inconsistency of traveling to the death camps to remember what Amalek did to us there, while at the same time neglecting the Holocaust victims who live in our midst is something which should not be ignored. If someone claims that this situation involves no small measure of hypocrisy, he will not be entirely mistaken. If someone is shocked by a person who prefers spending his money on an important death-camp "experience," rather than assisting someone who was hurt there, and thereby performing a real human kindness by so doing, he is not entirely mistaken either.
Here are several practical suggestions:
1. Cancel the Poland student trips and give all the money to organizations that grant assistance and support to Holocaust survivors. There are many such organizations, and you can find them by yourself. That's far less complicated than all of the logistics of traveling abroad. I would like to mention one worthy organization that distributes free medicines to the poor, including many Holocaust survivors: “Chaverim L’Refuah" [Friends for Healing].
2. Even if one does go to Poland, he should make sure that fifty-one percent of his expenses go to helping the victims themselves. This would allow one to argue that most of the funds are going to actual people, rather than to see Polish stones and rocks.
3. And even if this suggestion is rejected, then at the very least, ten percent of one’s total expenses from the trip should be invested in those suffering terribly to this very day, as a sort of ‘Ma’aser", a tithe. That would at least render us more "innocent before G-d and man." For all kinds of sound advice it is recommended to: “Look to the Rock from whence you were hewn" (Yeshayahu 51:1).