Whilst I was in London for Passover, commemorating the salvation of the Jewish people in ancient times, my best friend Nic was in Poland on a trip marking the Jews’ near extermination in the first half of the last century.
He is the leader of a group of eighteen year-old gap-year students from Britain, who are spending nine months on an organised programme in Israel, under the auspices of one of England’s many Zionist youth movements.
In the second term of the programme, there is a break from regular activities and the group flies from Israel to Warsaw, in order to visit the death camps and destroyed villages where many of the students’ ancestors either escaped from or perished. Speaking to Nic when they were midway through the trip, I asked him to describe what they’d seen and learned. “It’s beyond words, mate”, he told me. “You could write about it for the rest of your life, and you still wouldn’t have enough time to say it all.”
I turned down a place on a similar excursion when I was at school, believing that I wasn’t emotionally ready to deal with such an experience - and I’m still yet to make the journey to the scene of our near-destruction. However, the point of these trips is not just to mourn and wallow in the horror that took place sixty odd years ago. Rather, in order to honour the victims and learn from history’s mistakes, there are valuable lessons to be discovered, and a sense of morality to be instilled in the kids, which might otherwise be overlooked in their formative years. And Nic’s group proved this point perfectly during their time in Poland. More at Comment is Free…
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