Journey to Poland

The educational process of the Holocaust in our youth movement climaxes with a 6-day journey in Poland. This journey is one of the most essential events in our youth movement.

The journey lasts six days and is one of our most intense seminars, both in terms of schedule but also emotionally and intellectually. The days are led by qualified guides specially trained to lead trips in Poland and they are all academics and history experts. The guide will rely on a comprehensive booklet that includes historical materials, documents, and testimonies that will accompany our visit to the various sites. Each evening a group meeting takes place where we conclude the day and discuss the moral and emotional aspects that arose from the content we learned during the day. The journey both deals with the rich and diverse Jewish life that was in Poland; the largest Jewish community in the world before the war and the tragedies of extermination, as well as the position the local Jewish community has there today. We also look at how memory is formed and the struggle between narratives (which has long moved out of academia and moved into the agenda of international governments).

Another important aspect of the journey is the connection to the Hashomer Hatzair movement's history, the largest Zionist youth movement in Europe before the war. The movement wrote some of the most important and inspirational chapters of our people during the Holocaust. Both during educational and community activities in the ghettos and in the fighting and leading rebellions. Hashomer Hatzair was active throughout the war and continues to be so until today. It is a very eye-opening experience for our participants to realize that they are part of the same movement that wrote such a significant chapter in the history of our movement.
The dates of the journey are February 24 - March 1, 2022. The cost is 1,150 USD ground cost with no flight.

Schedule in Poland:

• The first day is dedicated to visiting the city of Krakow: the remains of the Jewish quarter, the ghetto, and the transport area.
• On the second day, we visit Auschwitz and Birkenau, the concentration and extermination camps. We will be exposed to the horrific dimensions of the Nazi extermination machines.
• On the third day, we visit the old city of Krakow, and we continue to the town of Tarnow, where an entire Jewish community was mostly destroyed. For us, the uniqueness of this town is that in 1919 a historic conference of our movement took place where questions of fulfillment and immigration to Israel were discussed.
• On the fourth day, we visit Lublin and Majdanek.
• The fifth and sixth days are devoted to visiting Warsaw, the remains of the ghetto, the impressive Jewish cemetery, and the heroic route commemorating the struggle and rebellion of the Polish and Jewish against the Nazis and the Treblinka extermination camp.

Throughout the journey, we hold memorial ceremonies in the extermination camps. The ceremonies are led, organized, and prepared by the participants. The decision to hold these ceremonies arose from the deep understanding that we are very close to the day when Holocaust survivors, will no longer be able to tell us their story themselves the horrors that occurred to them. Therefore, it is our role to hold up the memory, documentation and above all, internalization of lessons - the responsibility has passed to our generation.

The trip will include participants from Israel and 10 different countries in Europe.
Therefore, the journey is not during school vacation. We are aware of the difficulty
and challenges of missing school days - but we strongly believe that these days have a great educational value that could not be created under any other circumstances.

For more information, please reach out to Lee Oz englishdept@hashomer-hatzair.org