An Israeli Holocaust education institute is responding to Poland's controversial Holocaust law by offering Holocaust education trips to Ukraine instead of Poland. Some 20 guides have been trained to accompany tour groups to Ukraine thus far.
The Shem Olam Faith & the Holocaust Institute for Education and Research prepares students in Israel's education system for the annual high school trips to Poland. The institute hopes that from now on, these trips will be made to Ukraine instead of Poland.
Assuming there is an interest in these Ukraine tours, guides who have completed their training will soon begin to accompany individuals and later government ministries on tours to the country. Visitors will tour Kiev's synagogues and Babi Yar, the ravines where German forces, with the help of Ukrainian collaborators, massacred over 45,000 Jews. Tour groups will also fly to Lviv to see the city's Holocaust memorial and Jewish cemeteries.
After Poland watered down its Holocaust law, so that it no longer criminalized public assertions that Poland or Poles were complicit in Nazi crimes against the Jews during World War II, Poland and Israel issued a joint statement rejecting blaming Poland or its citizens for atrocities committed by the Nazis and praising the wartime Polish government-in-exile, saying it tried to "raise awareness among Western allies of the systematic murder" of Polish Jews.
Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum criticized the statement as historically inaccurate and highly problematic and Education Minister Naftali Bennett responded by announcing school trips to Poland would now include curricula devoted to Poland's role in the Holocaust.
Every year, some 30,000 students in Israel's education system fly to Poland for these Holocaust education trips. In 2017 alone, Israel invested 30 million shekels ($8,100,000) to subsidize high school trips to the Eastern European country. Taking into account the trips to Poland by school groups, government offices, members of Israel's military and security services as well as private delegations, Israel is estimated to contribute some 80 million shekels ($22,000,000) to Poland's tourism industry every year.
Shem Olam head Rabbi Avraham Krieger has asked Bennett to begin gradually diverting the dozens of memorial trips to Poland to Ukraine as well.
He said, "The time has come to stop the flow of millions of dollars into Poland from Israel every year. Even if it doesn't constitute a serious economic blow, it would send a clear sign of an ethical statement from the Jewish people. The Polish people are trying to deny the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. We, therefore, formulated an alternative in the form of memorial tours to Ukraine.
"We will continue to teach the next generation history, only without cooperating and contributing to those who try to rewrite it," he said.
