HaShomer HaTzair's Young Educators' Humanistic Journey to Poland

"It is within this filth that our war is fought. Let us not forget that the hardest war is our war against ourselves: Let us not get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions!" Mordechai Anielewicz , 1943 This year, after 3 years of covid-19 related cancelations of our journey to Poland, we set to renew the 40-year long tradition of our journeys to Poland. The diplomatic crisis between Israel and Poland and the internal Polish debate about Holocaust denial and the Polish cooperation with the Nazi regime, have resulted in a big vacuum and a practical inability to convey our regular educational program. We see humanistic Holocaust education as one of your tasks as a movement, and therefore we intend on sending out gap-year volunteers to the commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw rebellion. These 100 educators educate some 10,000 members of our youth movement, and this educational process will be payed forward in their educational activity during and after their personal journey. As we see it, the important conversation about nowadays antisemitism, has to be held within the context of the moral responsibility of the Jewish majority in Israel. In our journeys we also focus on the lives of young German citizens, what is called "Ordinary Men", and their choices confronting "the banality of evil". During the journey, each group holds a formal ceremony in every station along the way, ending in the main ceremony in the Miła 18 memorial in Warsaw, commemorating the fallen members of the movement in the Jewish Fighting Organization. This year, as mentioned before, it is especially important – not only because of the 80th anniversary. It has special importance because the political winds of Holocaust denial are getting stronger from the outside, while nationalistic ideas are getting stronger inside. We believe that only humanistic education is the answer to these both. Recent geopolitical developments have made it very challenging financially to send young volunteers on this journey. We ask for your help in our cause of humanistic Holocaust education through this journey, and in commemoration of the 110th anniversary of HaShomer HaTzair, and 80th anniversary of the Warsaw uprising. We ask for your help to assist the volunteers in need of funding to go on this important journey.