I am commenting on a recent news article about student visits to Auschwitz, which I have quoted below.
The following quote is from the news article:
Auschwitz should not be elevated to sacredness.
Altering Israel’s historical education will also help to change the perception in the country that the Jewish state is here only because of the horrors of Nazism. Israel’s existence should not be seen as compensation for the butchery of Jews in Europe. But pilgrimages that connect Poland and Israel, or those using Poland as a tool with which to bolster the commitment of young Israelis to their own country, send exactly this message. There is a tragedy, and then rebirth.
But there is no resurrection. The dead are still dead. The Jewish culture that was destroyed in Poland and across Europe will never re-emerge. Israel is not a compensation for Auschwitz, and its marching teenagers, with their flags and their songs, with their we-are-still-here spirit, spite only the ghosts.
What I believe we Israelis need is a realignment. We need to remember the dead without forgetting them or forgiving their butchers. We need to draw the proper lessons from the Holocaust — one of which is that there is no merit in dying and Jews must be proactive in our quest to keep living. So let’s not confuse ourselves by making Auschwitz the axis of our culture and the culmination of our civic religion. Let’s keep our March of the Living where it belongs: here, in Israel.
End quote
When I first began to travel to Holocaust sites, I was warned not to go to Auschwitz during the “March of the Living” so I avoided going at that time. However, as it turned out, the March of the Living was actually going on when I was there on one of my visits.
I was appalled by the way the Israeli students acted. I understood the reason for the warning. Some of the students tried to grab my expensive camera. Others attacked me by throwing stones at me. It was a nightmare. After that, I understood why the Nazis wanted the Jews out of Germany.
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