Feature: Holocaust education becomes a must in Israel for nationalism

Behind a plain brick cabin in the former twin death camps Auschwitz-Birkenau, built by Nazi Germany in southern Poland, is a low wall, known among Holocaust survivors as the "Death Wall", where prisoners were executed for discipline breaches.

On a cloudy day last October the cabin was filled with dozens of teens from Israel, who gathered around a single candle lit at its center. In a solemn ceremony titled "Every Person Has a Name" they read a list of names of family members who perished in the Holocaust 70 years ago.

For Dana Karniely, a 17-year-old high-school student from Israel, this was the highlight of a packed eight-day class trip, during which some 200 students from Tel-Aviv visited two death camps, three concentration camps and two ghettos.

They were accompanied by a Holocaust survivor who guided them along the different stops in his personal history, from the ghetto his birth town, to the final camp he survived, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

"This trip made the Holocaust tangible," said Karniely. "It was different than having studied about the history of the Holocaust and World War II in school last year, when we had to memorize details," she explained. "When we were visiting Treblinka, where about 80 of my own family members perished, I could feel the pain of my grandfathers -- who were unable to tell me what they had experienced there -- and see them as children in the ghetto and the camps."

High-school Holocaust remembrance trips to Poland became a meaningful passage rite for a growing number of youths in Israel. In 2014 alone, some 30,000 students participated in such trips, and the Education Ministry expects a 10 percent increase in 2015, a spokesperson with the ministry told Xinhua.

These trips constitute a major instrument in the Israeli Education Ministry's efforts not only to pass on the memory of the Holocaust to younger generations, but also to instill in these soon-to-be-soldiers a sense of nationalistic zeal.

A 2012 governmental survey showed that an overwhelming majority of more than 85 percent of the trip participants reported a strengthened sense of identity and increased national pride. About 92 percent said they developed a firm conviction in the importance of Israel as a Jewish state.

During her trip to Poland, Karniely added, the Israeli national collective memory was emphasized.

"One guide attempted the whole time to invoke Zionism and the importance of Eretz Israel (The Land of Israel) to Jewish existence," she said, adding that at the height of a ceremony in Auschwitz, the guides chanted "Am Israel Chai" (The People of Israel Live).

For 70 years since the end of the WWII, the Holocaust education has been taking a central place in Israeli society: Israel commemorates its own Holocaust Memorial Day (usually in April), separately from the International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, by holding ceremonies in all educational institutions, and a nationwide silent moment marked by public sirens.

Since the 1980s, Holocaust studies are obligatory in all high schools, including those serving the minority Arab population.

Last year, these efforts have been expanded, as the new Education Minister from the Nationalist Zionist movement, Rabbi Shay Piron, issued a detailed mandatory educational program to be taught, starting this year, at all levels of public education, including, for the first time, kindergarten children. Kindergarten teachers have been receiving special training, so they can follow the scripted teaching manual to the letter.

The new educational kit for toddlers, "Down Memory Lane," is based on an original album of paintings drawn by a father in a ghetto trying to depict the outside world to his son, who had never seen anything but the harsh realities of ghetto life.

"Holocaust remembrance is central to our national identity," said Eliraz Kraus, head of the Department for Sociology and Humanities at the Ministry of Education.

The Israeli Holocaust studies system has gone global, too. The national Holocaust museum, Yad VaShem, runs programs in collaboration with governments and educational institutions abroad.

Eyal Kaminka, head of the International School for Holocaust Studies in Yad VaShem, said "the rising anti-Semitism in Europe today is something we need to watch out for, and I believe we can learn from the past to better shape the future."

The school's several hundred workers develop pedagogical tools and train educators overseas with the aim of reaching various audiences worldwide, from the youth to public opinion leaders.

In July, the school hosted a four-day training for some 450 educators from 50 countries, including China, Poland, Argentina, Canada, Namibia, Venezuela, Greece, and Spain, titled "Through Our Own Lens: Reflecting on the Holocaust from Generation to Generation". Enditem