ABSTRACT

Towards the end of the 1980s several high schools began, at their own initiative, to conduct visits of pupils to Poland, and in 1989 Israel’s Ministry of Education also began to initiate similar trips. Almost from the very beginning these visits generated public debate about their character and purpose, their content, and how they were carried out. In the last few years the visits of these groups have nonetheless taken a central place in the teaching of the Holocaust and in the formation of its memory. It is estimated that during the first few years of these visits a total of about 10,000 eleventh- and twelfth-year pupils took part in them, mostly to Poland but some to Czechoslovakia and Hungary. According to Ministry of Education data, the number increased in the last few years of the twentieth century, to 18,000 and even 20,000 pupils each year, and in 2005 to about 28,000, which is about one-fifth of the pupils in the relevant grades. About one-third of the pupils participated in the visits within the framework of the Ministry of Education’s programs, the remainder through school-organized delegations. In addition, a procession of delegations from both Israel and the Diaspora, the “March of the Living,” is held in Poland every two years. The “March of the Living” is officially recognized by Israel. Since 2001 delegations totaling more than 1000 Israeli soldiers and officers have also begun to visit the extermination camps every year.