From Poland, they traveled to Israel, where they spent Israel’s Independence Day celebrating the rebirth of our nation in our own homeland. The symbolism of this trip is remarkable. It represents the worst tragedy and the greatest victory of modern Jewish history. And for two decades, the Jewish establishment deserved accolades and applause for the incredible effect the “March of the Living” has had on a generation of students.
Until this year. Today’s newspapers carry a front page story describing how this year’s trip will not come to Israel due to the security situation. The symbolism of this decision runs counter to every lesson taught by the March of the Living through the past 20 years.
The organizers say this year’s group will still visit Poland. They will still be able to see what was once the largest Jewish community in the world. They will still be able to visit synagogues, yeshivot and rural villages that once housed the greatest Jewish minds and leaders of the second millennium. They will be able to understand that all of that long and proud history has been destroyed.
But they will not be able to witness the continuing heroism of the Jewish nation. They will not be able to see a Jewish army that now fights anti-Semites bent on annihilating our people. They will not be able to see the thriving Jewish world that has been built on the ashes of Europe.
The March of the Living is so named because it takes Jewish students on a life march – an odyssey of the Jewish nation as we progress from death and destruction to life and renewal. From Europe, where Jews were no more than fuel for the fires of the death camps, to Israel, where Jews provide intellectual fuel for industry, innovation, government, business, the arts, and everything in between.
This year, the Jewish nation is in crisis. Our home is being mercilessly attacked by a foe no less dangerous than Nazi Germany, bent on the same purpose, with the same ideology. But unlike Polish Jewry, Israel survives and will continue to survive despite such attacks, because Israel has an army and a sense of purpose, and because Israel is our home.
Over the past two months, anti-Semitism has reared its ugly head in frightening revival. Official statements from French politicians, calculated apathy from other world leaders, and a serious rise in anti-Semitic incidents in North America, have all shown that no Jewish community in the world is any more safe than in Israel.
When historians define the beginning of the Holocaust, most refer to Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass. On November 8-9, 1938, murderous hordes swept through Germany destroying over 200 synagogues and countless Jewish business, killing scores of Jews, and shipping hundreds to concentration camps. Within a year, Germany had conquered Austria and Poland and had invaded France, and the Second World War had begun.
On March 11, 2002, anti-Semites torched one of the oldest synagogues in Toronto – Canada’s largest Jewish community. While law enforcement officials are not on the side of the attackers this time, the message cannot be ignored that Jewish security in the Diaspora is quickly disappearing.
But rather than really internalize the lessons of the Holocaust and apply them to the current situation, the North American Jewish establishment has seen fit to tell its youth only part of the story this year. So thousands of students will travel to Poland, cry over the ashes of the once proud Jewish world there, and then return home. They will understand death and destruction.
But they will not understand the life and renewal that Israel offers all Jews. They will see no answer to the Holocaust, or to the anti-Semitism that plagues their communities today. There will be no impetus for them to immigrate to Israel. Rather, they will hear about “the security situation” from their leaders and decide that it is no worse where they are.
The organizers of this year’s trip have failed miserably. They have failed to evoke the symbolism that was inherent in past trips, and they have failed to impart to their youth any hope or pride in the Jewish future.
They have also failed Israel. Israel was created on the ashes of the Holocaust. It is an answer – the answer – to all attempts to annihilate the Jews. The Establishment leaders are showing that the Holocaust is important, but that our answer to it is not. They visit Poland, where 90% of the Jewish community was destroyed, and with it all the history, culture and religion that thrived there. They remember how one-third of the world’s Jews were wiped out by evil anti-Semitism. They pay homage to ghosts.
But they will not come to Israel, where one-third of the world’s Jews live, despite such anti-Semitism. They will not come to see how a Jewish society thrives in spite of, and because of, such hatred. They will see the problem, the sorrow of our history, but not the answer. They will see the dead, but not the living.
Copyright 2002. All rights reserved. Yehuda Poch is a journalist living in Israel. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission only.
