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Friday, December 24, 2010

Israeli Education and Poland: What Does Israel Teach Its Schoolchildren about Poland?

Posted by ai at 5:58 AM

Recently, in the comments section of
the blog, the question arose: How does Israel educate its schoolchildren about
Poland?

I sent the letter, below, to the Israeli Consulate in New York, to the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and
to Gideon
Sa'ar, the Minister of Education.

I also wrote to
four scholars and one friend, all of whom have been to Israel and are familiar,
to a greater or lesser extent, with Israel.

Of course,
these are all busy people, and they will no doubt have limited time to devote
to this question, but I will happily post whatever answers I receive.

Below please find the note I sent to the official bodies
mentioned above:

Dear Sir or Madam,

Hello, I write about Polish-Jewish relations and several recent posts on
the blog devoted to my book "Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype, Its
Role in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture" caused me to
question how Poland is taught in Israeli schools.

Unfortunately,
there is some evidence that Israeli schools have presented a skewed and
negative image of Poland. For example, in his book "The Seventh
Million," Israeli historian Tom Segev depicts Israeli schoolchildren as
blaming Poland and Poles for the Holocaust "because someone has to be
guilty of the Holocaust. We have to hate someone, and we've already made up
with the Germans." Segev also mentions a museum that depicts all Jews in
Poland as poor and with bent backs, but fails to mention that some Jews in
Poland were successful and happy – because that image, Segev says, does not fit
Israel's image of Jews in Poland. Segev quotes a schoolteacher telling
children, "Jew hatred is as natural to Poland as blue is to the sky."

Marion Marzynski's film "Shtetl" includes a
disturbing scene depicting Israeli schoolchildren at Ramat Aviv high school
attacking Zbigniew Romaniuk, a Polish historian who had worked diligently to
restore his town's Jewish history, and who was undeserving of the rude and hostile
treatment these schoolchildren showed him. The schoolchildren state the
following falsehoods as if there were true: that the Poles could have defeated
the Nazis if they wanted to, that Poles are responsible for the Holocaust, that
anti-Semitism is an essential and inextricable part of Polish identity, that
there was no difference between the Polish underground and the Nazis, etc. The
full transcript.

That negative depictions of Poles and Poland are not
accidental to Israel or Israeli identity is suggested by a provocative
and telling 2007 statement by Israeli politician Zevulun Orlev. Orlev
argued that teaching Israeli schoolchildren that Poland is a "cursed"
land, Poland is "the valley of death," and that Poland is the modern
analog to the Egypt of the book of Exodus, is central to building a sense of
Jewish and Israeli identity.

As has frequently been
pointed out, Poland was the most significant site of Diaspora for Jews for
hundreds of years, with estimates of seventy-five or even eighty percent of the
world's Jews living in Poland before the twentieth century. Most of American
Jews trace their ancestry to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Most of
Israel's leaders do, as well. Many of the cultural features one thinks of as
Jewish, from potato pancakes to Hasidic dress to a sarcastic sense of humor,
are rooted in Poland rather than in the Torah. Tragically, given the location
of Nazi death camps like Auschwitz in occupied Poland, the Holocaust took
place, largely, in Poland. Given this, it is a matter of some import how
Israeli schools educate, or fail to educate, their students about Poland.

I am eager to learn about how Poland is taught in Israeli
schools. Are the pictures that Segev, Marzynski, and Orlev paint accurate? Or
has Israel improved its teaching of Poland in Israeli schools?

I look forward to receiving as much information from you as
you care to share. I would be very, very grateful for any statement that you
might allow me to post on my blog. Links to online curriculum materials would
be especially welcome.

Thank you.

 

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