Poland and the Holocaust

My son is in Poland at the moment, doing what might be called 'The Holocaust Tour'. For ten-fifteen years, the Holocaust has been a standard part of the Israeli school curriculum in history, and groups generally tour Poland whilst in the eleventh grade. During the year, they learn about the Holocaust (they also learnt about the Nazi party, the putsch, Crystalnacht, the Molotov/Ribbentrop agreement, the Wannsee conference at al.) and had extra-curricular meetings about Poland in particular. As part of their preparation, they visited the Yad VaShem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem which is a harrowing experience. I have been there three times (about once every thirteen years), and every time gets harder.

We managed to speak to him on the phone last night and he seemed cheerful enough. Today is probably the highlight - or lowlight - of the trip: they visit Auschwitz. We offered to phone tonight, but he declined, saying that he would be watching the final of the World Cup. This demonstrates the emotional elasticity of youth - from Auschwitz to football in a few hours.

I was surprised to come across a description, slightly fictionalised, of a visit to Auschwitz in the book "Deaf Sentence: A Novel" by David Lodge. I once found an excellent interview with Lodge about the book, in which he confesses that the final two events (the visit to Poland and the father's death) occurred in real life but in the opposite order. Unfortunately, I lost the reference to that interview. It is interesting to read his comments, considering that Lodge was born Catholic and so not raised in the same cultural stew that I and my son were.

In 1976, my youth movement held what was called an 'ideological seminar' in Ilford, London. This time we concentrated on the Holocaust and even met with a few Holocaust survivors living in the vicinity. At the time, we tended to have the impression that very few people survived, but this seems not to have been the case.