Enough of the shock treatment
A committee formed by the Ministry of Education has recommended assigning psychologists to the delegations of teenagers traveling to Poland.
By Avirama GolanA committee formed by the Ministry of Education has recommended assigning psychologists to the delegations of teenagers traveling to Poland. The ministry accepted the recommendation, based on the committee's assessment that teenagers find it difficult to cope with the horrors at the memorial sites established at the extermination camps and that many of them develop "post-traumatic" symptoms.
Manifestations cited by the committee have included hysterical weeping, anorexia and lack of appetite, violence toward the "locals" (the Poles), vandalism and theft of items from hotels, and the hiring of strippers to come to their rooms.
In the spirit of our contemporary period, which places the emotional well-being of the 17-year-old youth ahead of the reasonable demand that he or she act like a civilized human being, unruly behavior also becomes "an emotional symptom." Thus, teenagers will be accorded instant treatment from a therapist every time the difficult impression left from visiting the incinerators drives them, enwrapped in an Israeli flag, to beat up some Polish person. It is unfortunate that the special committee did not state the truth: that the behavioral disturbances of the teenagers are, in fact, a sign that the time has come for a profound reassessment of the trips to Poland.
Even if none of those with whom the idea of these trips originated ever dreamed of turning a tragic memory into a profits machine, it is hard to ignore the distortion that derives from the cost of the trip. The parents of the lucky ones who travel to the extermination camps pay about $1,000. Few of those who cannot afford it receive funding from the system. There are also more expensive trips that include tours of other cities, even Prague. In this way, the children of the top deciles receive the gas chambers and classical Europe in the same package.
Most of the teachers and students return from the trip in a state of shock, and their conclusion is unequivocal: We finally understand why it is important to protect the State of Israel. This in itself is a respectable achievement, but it raises three questions: First, why isn't it possible for teachers to get this message across with the excellence and professional assistance of Yad Vashem and Massua, and without the shock treatment?
Second, why is "the importance of the state" detached in pupils' consciousness from the historical context in which the Holocaust occurred? Instead of teaching about the destruction of European Jewry as a central chapter within the broad context of the rise of fascism in Europe, classroom hours in general history were cut back and the Holocaust is studied as an extra-historical event, one that rose out of eternal anti-Semitism. This is in addition to the superficializing and rightward drift in the study of Zionism and civics. The result is that most of the teenagers are led to believe that Jewish nationalism was born in Auschwitz, not in Basel and in the pioneering waves of immigration. Does it come as a surprise, then, that they are convinced that ultra-Orthodoxy and extreme nationalist Orthodoxy, which wave the ahistorical banner, constitute the exclusive Judaism?
The third question is why the hell does everything have to fall on the Poles? The answer is simple: Because the emotional shock occurs on the soil of Poland, hence the Holocaust is perceived as an issue between the Poles and the Jews. (The Germans elegantly slide out of the equation.) In this context, young people's paranoid wrapping of themselves in the flag, and their violence toward Poles, seem logical, even normal. It doesn't take a psychologist to explain these phenomena. But this is not the way to learn history.
Israeli students should learn to understand the history of their people, but also the history of the Nazi idea and the power of its attraction. The Holocaust was not a demonic blow. Human beings were responsible for it. Not the Poles as a nation, but the Germans and their many collaborators in Europe, including in Poland.
Now, when not only Israeli teenagers are in need of the constant presence of a psychologist to calm their existential anxieties, and when entire peoples are still being intentionally murdered and massacred around the world, it would be best to stay at home, to close the cash register on the trips to Poland, and to start to learn history from the beginning.
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Do you know that during the WWII Poland was only country ocuppied by Germans, where for hiding Jews were only one punishmnet for you and all your family - DEATH? And if you want to know who rescured the most of Jews during the WWII just count the trees in Yad Vashem. Remember, we were also victims.
I think young Iraelis could learn in Poland much more than they learn now. E.g. who knows in Israel that Polish Jews in middle ages had regular armed forces that participated in the so called "wojny kozackie" as one of components of the armed foces of a kingdom? They defended one of the sieges in such a way that it is called "Polish Masada" by some historians of a military. Philosophers, writers, religious developments, self-management, Bund, etc. And Shoah... 1000 yrs of a history - it's more than many nations can count for themselves. It gives a perspective...
Bravo, the author! I assisted once to such a trip with a group ow Jewish teenagers from Poland. This "shock therapy" leads to hatred. Whe you treat young people with such "therapy" for sure they will need psychologists. So, my kids were so happy to meet Israelis, usually it was firs time in their lives, - but all that ended when one boy was by beaten by drunken Israeli who didn't want any "Poles" at the party. Then the two groups travelled together but separately and never spoke one to another. Israeli group with armed bodygourds and participants pointing with fingers at my kids "for fun". Actually, my group was from 15 to 17, Israelis older and they looked as if they were regular European skinheads. That was 10 yrs ago, it's sad to hear that not much has changed:( Thanks to the Author for this article.
...in what is being taught to participants. In Gazeta Wyborcza, Laurence Weinbaum from WJC quoted this text that was once given them: "We will be surrounded everywhere by people who live there and our sentiments towards them will be ambiguous. We will hate them for their participation in cruel deeds but we will pity them because of the unhappy life that they live now. We will not be swayed by negative emotions" (translation mine). So, those young Jews were taught to regard the Poles as murderers worthy of hatred only mitigated by "pity". When the liberation of the Auschwitz camp was commemorated in 95, there was a lot of coverage in Canadian TV, but nothing was said about non-Jewish Poles who died there. At some point they interviewed a young Jewish girl from the March of the Living and she said: “But we must not forget the non-Jewish victims”. I said to myself “at least one mention”. Nope. She mentioned Roma and gays, but not Poles who were the second largest group of victims
You forgot to mentioned that the most cruel (and most numerous) to Jews was Jewish police (read some Jewish authors). And NO, they didn't have to be that cruel or do such criminal things, even in such circumstances. Your last statement does not come from your experience. Have you seen it? Why don't you mention that the entire security systems in Poland after the war was run by Jews-communists? Look into the history book. Who was in the top positions in Security organization and governement in Poland after 1945? Why don't you mentioned that 55,000 Poles were killed by those people and 800,000 were inprisoned? Does Polish blood is worth less than Jewish? If you think so (and your statemets shows it), you are the one who is racist. If you talking about Kielce, that is now known as KGB provocation where Russians, communist police, and undercover agents done the shooting. The whole incident was to blame Poles and to soften the West for russian decision not to make free election in Poland.
my in-laws forgot the polish language, because their family was murdered by former class-mates in Poland (many sttories like that...)
Were you there? I was. THe killers were Germans, Balts and Ukrainians (the most cruel), but the Poles denounced the often hiding Jews. Of course, some gentle souls saved us, , but you never knew who to trust. After the war, Poland was the ONLY country where Jews were killed, dragged off trains and in villages when they wanted to see their former homes.
Thanks Avirama. And I agree with you too, Ittay.
I agree with Avirama Golan. Particularly this statement ?The result is that most of the teenagers are led to believe that Jewish nationalism was born in Auschwitz, not in Basel and in the pioneering waves of immigration.? It?s time we stop teaching ntisemitism as the raison detre for the Jewish state.
These young people of Israel need to be reminded that the murderers were GERMANS. !!!! Get it through your stupid heads.....they were GERMANS, GERMANS, GERMANS !!!!
You are absolutely right!
The holocaust stands out uniquely as the worst crime in history, in the worst war in history, committed by some of the worst people in history. It was not entirely unique, they were not the first people to try and exterminate us. They are also not the last people to wish to do so. Zionism did not begin in the ovens, or in the camps or in the Ghettos, but it did begin in the places where the ideas that lead to these things, has become embedded. The holocaust came for the irrational hatred and the irrational hatred made Zionism necessary, because some people saw the Holocaust coming, while others had to wait until after the war to realize they had someplace to return to. It took the holocaust to convince the world and even many of us, of our need. It is not the whole story, it is not even the final chapter, but it is an important chapter. As for the behavior of these teenagers, well, send a chaperon.
don't you think?
Don't preach, Avirama, as if your readers are ignorant and illiterate, and you alone wave the banner of intellect. Heed your own words. Your newspaper is no longer a source of information. It is a cheap propaganda machine.
Sometimes it's good for teens to have a ready and handy excuse for vandalism and theft of items from hotels, and the hiring of strippers to come to their rooms.
The holocaust is the most horrible of a long string of anti-semitic atrocities committed the world over through the ages. They started many millenia ago and continue to this present day. It is important to teach the holocaust in its current context. Learning about holocaust by touring auschwitz is like learning about physics by looking at the tower of pisa. The holocaust is a symptom of Jew-Hatred.
I suggest the history teachers go back to the Pogroms and remind the students that in the beginning of the 20th century Jewish women were hiding in basements for fear of rape by the Cossacks and Jewish men and women ran out of the Pale of Settlement without ever returning. Students today do not make pilgrimages to Belarus or the Ukraine to find out the truth about what happened in the Pogroms and I do not believe the countries where they took place are interested in popularizing that subject. Hopefully enough is taught from books in classrooms which include not only the Pogroms but also World War I and everything that led up to the Holocaust. Only after many years of careful and chronological study from real books, then some people should try and go to Poland. I do believe that somewhere there are a few mature teenagers who can manage the trip without being discipline problems but they have to be selected very carefully with a psychologist included in the examination process.
We must congratulate Avirama Golan for this lucid, accurate and constructive article throughout. This is becoming rare among today's journalists.
They should go to Gaza and to checkpoints in the WB... Its cheaper, closer, and devoid of the psychological shock of concentration camps (take note - i did not equate the two!) Nonetheless, they have everything a true ghetto has to offer. I find it somewhat fascist unto itself, to educate children that in order to protect themselves against a threat which no longer exists, they must use whatever means necessary in effectively, support a self-fulfilling prophesy and fear based leadership. Existentialism belongs in college and graduate school, keep it away from the kids.