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Misuse Of Holocaust?

Israel's education minister says
youth trips were to provide
right-wing nationalists.

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Since
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THE JEWISH NEWS
3546060

T

he politics of the Holo-
caust have flared up
again in Israel. The
spark was a recent state-
ment by Education Minister
Shulamith Aloni that she
would like to eliminate the
ministry's student visits to
Nazi concentration camps in
Poland because the
youngsters often come home
as Jewish chauvinists.
"Parades with Israeli flags
on the streets of Poland is
not the way to study the
Holocaust," Ms. Aloni said
about two weeks ago. "I fear
that many youngsters
return from there with the
sense that the most impor-
tant thing is power, and I
want to return (them) to true
Judaism, to humanism.
"There's too much
parading around here about
the Holocaust, the expulsion
from Spain, persecution and
suffering. Too much manip-
ulation (to see ourselves as)
victims who must be
strong."
Not surprisingly, Israel's
right-wing charged that Ms.
Aloni was trying to blur the
memory of the Holocaust.
They further claimed that
she wanted to wean Israeli
youth from their heritage
and from the idea that a
strong Israel was the answer
to the Holocaust.
The accusers concluded
that the education minister
meant to weaken the Jewish
identity of Israeli youths and
turn them into secular left-
wingers —just like herself.
"Aloni creates a bad at-
mosphere around everything
having to do with Jewish
tradition, heritage and
values," claimed Shlomo
Gurvitz, the former chair-
man of Betar, the Likud Par-
ty's youth movement. He
now heads the Jewish Agen-
cy's Youth and Pioneering
Department, which
organizes its own concentra-
tion camp visits.
"If we were talking about
preserving Arab heritage,"
said Mr. Gurvitz, "the edu-
cation minister wouldn't
have objected."
Amid complaints from
Knesset members,

educators, parents and
students, Ms. Aloni claimed
she had been misquoted and
misunderstood. She insisted`
that she certainly wanted to
continue teaching students
about the Holocaust, but to
teach them lessons other
that presented on these min-
istry-sponsored trips — that
the whole world has always
been, and always will be, out
to get Jews.
To calm the waters, Ms.
Aloni appointed a committee
to study the issue.
Israeli organizations and
movements of various polit-
ical and religious stripes
have sent students to see the
concentration camps since
Poland resumed relations
with Israel four years ago.
From its start, the Edu-
cation Ministry's program,
which yearly sends 1,500
students, has been directed
by ministry officials from

"Parades with
Israeli flags on the
streets of Poland is
not the way to
study the
Holocaust."

Shulamith Aloni

the right-wing National Re-
ligious Party, which had po-
litical control over public
education before Ms. Aloni
became education minister.
The trips were "designed
to make students into right-
wing nationalists," said
Israeli author and journalist
Tom Segev, whose recent
book, The Seventh Million,
examines Israeli attitudes to
the Holocaust and how they
are determined by the
"politics of memory."
Mr. Segev joined one of the
ministry's student trips to
Auschwitz, Maidenek,
Treblinka and other Holo-
caust sites in Poland, and
found it "a ritual with a set
of rules the students have to
follow . . . which tells them
what they should think
about the Holocaust."
The journalist recalled
that the ministry's booklets
for the students "contain
little 'dialogs' for them to
read at the memorial sites.

