Israeli Teenagers’ Inculcated Polonophobia Totten

Teaching about the Holocaust: Essays by College and University Teachers, by Samuel Totten (Editor), Paul R. Bartrop (Editor). 2004

Israeli Teenagers’ Holocaust-Related Visits to Poland Bring Out Severe Polonophobic Prejudices

The highlight (or, more accurately, lowlight) of this book is a passage in the chapter written by Nili Keren. She described her visits to Poland, and then made some candid statements about the Israeli Shoah-related visits to Poland

WHY THE TRIPS? FORGET ABOUT LEARNING “TOLERANCE”: PROMOTING A RATHER CHAUVINISTIC JEWISH NATIONALISM

Nili Keren candidly comments, “So, more than ten thousand Israeli high school students now visit Poland every year and thousands of Jewish students from all over the world arrive in Poland every year to participate in ‘The March of the Living’, which seemingly serves as an instrument to rebuilt their Jewish identity. It seems to me that the trips have become an instrumental and manipulative tool for a Jewish-Zionist education.” (p. 134).

GERMAN GUILT DILUTION: BLAMING (WHO ELSE?) THE POLES

The statements of the Israeli 16 and 17 year olds, quoted by Keren (p. 133), are revealing:

“In Poland, I understood the Holocaust.”

“In Poland, when I saw the Polish people, I realized that they were no better than the Germans.”

Really? But nothing new.

Obviously, these Israeli teenagers had not been born with this bigotry. They must have acquired it from their parents or other adults.

SYSTEMATIC ANTI-POLONISM IN THE SO-CALLED MARCH OF THE LIVING

The foregoing is not fluke. For more on the ingrained Polonophobia freely expressed among Jewish visitors to Poland, see my review of Jackie Feldman, ABOVE THE DEATH PIT.