Posted on 04/27/2008 12:16:53 PM PDT by lizol
Bad manners at Warsaw Ghetto
Israeli youths in Poland ceremony score failing grade with disrespectful behavior
Attila Somfalvi
Published: 04.24.08, 10:36 / Israel Opinion
It’s been a while since I felt both so proud and so embarrassed to be Israeli at the same time, as I felt during my visit to Poland.
On the one hand, I was overwhelmed by powerful patriotic feelings, nationalistic even, when I stood under the blue-and-white flags proudly carried by Israeli students in the cold winds of Auschwitz and Majdanek. On the other hand, I was red with shame in the face of the behavior of Israeli youths during events that required a little respect and restraint.
For example, the impressive and dignified ceremony organized by the Poles to mark 65 years to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising that was attended, in addition to Polish President Lech Kaczynski and Israeli President Shimon Peres, by the French foreign minister, representatives of the German and US governments, Polish senators, Holocaust survivors, war veterans, senior Polish army officers – and also hundreds of Israeli teenagers from across the nation who were just finishing an intensive journey through the death camps.
It is difficult to describe the huge Polish investment in the event. It is also difficult to describe the reverence shown by the hundreds of non-Israeli invitees to the speeches delivered by the two presidents, the singing of the El Maleh Rachamim memorial prayer, the Israeli national anthem, the Hebrew prayers, and the entire ceremony. It appeared that everyone was doing above and beyond in order to honor the memory of the Warsaw Ghetto heroes.
Yet at the same time, a few meters away, the jungle was going wild. On the Israeli side where the youth delegation members were concentrated, everyone behaved as though they were in the middle of some feast on a Tel Aviv traffic island. Only the barbeques were missing, but we had snacks, soft drinks, loud giggling, and screaming. Some students were lying on the grass while listening to their iPods. We also had group gatherings, a mini-festival of storytellers and jokers, short naps, smoking, whispers, the occasional game of “catch” accompanied by cheerful calls, nuts and seeds, and childish, embarrassing, and exaggerated panic upon hearing the gun salute. It was all there.
Teenagers have not learned a thing Indifferent teachers were also there, busy searching for a comfortable spot to lean on. We also had Education Ministry representatives with hands in their pockets who observed what was going on without doing a thing – overall, what we had there was a great shame. With the exception of several dozen youths who bothered to follow the ceremony and hold up flags, the Mideastern party continued according to plan and with no connection to the memory of the Jews who fought the Nazis.
One of the teachers explained to me that the Education Ministry is at fault because it did not bothered to organize chairs for the Israelis and the ceremony was long. Another teacher said the students had trouble following the speeches in Polish, and therefore lost interest in what was happening around them. This explanation could have been valid had I not seen with my own eyes the lack of interest and zero respect displayed by most students to the symbols of the State of Israel during President Shimon Peres’ speech – delivered in clear and fluent Hebrew. I will make no mention of the students’ attitude to the Polish national anthem and other speakers for obvious reasons of shame.
At the heart of Warsaw, a few meters away from the Rapaport Warsaw Ghetto monument, after eight days, three concentration camps, two ghettos, and dozens of stories – the Israeli teenagers proved on the last day of their journey that they have not learned a thing.
Perhaps they know more about the Holocaust, but in all matters related to manners, culture, education, and respect to others – they scored a humiliating failing grade. And with this grade they returned home, to Israel, to their parents and education system that have indeed put them on a plane to Poland – but sent them there without any moral baggage.
Irreverent children, unappreciative youth... each generation has to learn its own lessons.
I wouldn’t want to visit any of the camps, but I would visit monuments in Poland and Israel.
bttt
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Teenagers have not learned a thing Indifferent teachers were also there, busy searching for a comfortable spot to lean on. We also had Education Ministry representatives with hands in their pockets who observed what was going on without doing a thing
Indifferent teachers, clueless administrators, and the kids didn't get it, learned nothing from what would should have been an experience remembered for life.
What's needed is early intervention, mandatory preschool from age 2, maybe the loser of Obama-Hillary can move to Israel and instituet something like that.
I don’t know. What better testament to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising than Israeli teenagers, full of life, behaving like teenagers. Despite the Nazi goal to exterminate Europe’s Jewry, those bored and slightly rude young men and women are their own monument and ceremony... The Nazis failed. Thank God, they failed.
I hope this isn’t representative of the universal reaction, but good for Poland for hosting it.
Yes, there's a lot to that, but shame on the teachers. They had a charge, and they failed.
I've lived in Israel for the last two years. They get it. It sits in the back of their hearts like a burden that will never ever leave. You don't have to worry. They get it.
No, what we have is a reporter’s opinion of the teenagers’ behavior. So, I wouldn’t be so quick to “shame” the teachers.
I presume that was supposed to be a joke. If so, please indicate that so there would be no room for doubt as to your point.
I didn't say the kids didn't get it, I said the teachers failed. In my experience kids all sorts of stuff we don't give them credit for, and they don't lose all of that insight when they become teenagers. However even if the kids get it, their teachers, particularly when acting as chaperones, have the responsibility of both teaching and enforcing proper decorum. It the article is correct, they failed.
Yes, but relevent, because if you read the article it mentions representatives of the Education Ministry. Hands in their pockets. No, I don’t necessarily believe the article. But I do believe that both Obama and Hillary would replace the Department of Education, despised by Reagan, expanded by GWB with no child left behind, with a Ministry which would educate 2 year olds. Obama would probaly educate anyone who survived the womb by 48 hours (leaving some room there for his kill the live abortions position in Illinois) under a Ministry. The question, who would be the Minister.
Probably ranted too much in that reply. These teenagers are guests in another nation, if they haven’t learned proper behavior, shame on someone. And the direct responsibility lies with their escorts.
Well, there’s the probem. The teachers didn’t have next to them telling them what they should be doing. :>}
Mizrahim?
Sounds as though teenagers, with a few exceptions, are the same, the world over.
I was there on a hot summer day.There were two souvenir stands there selling kitschy trinkets, and an air-conditioned bus of tired and bored foreign tourists had just arrived. Some didn’t bother to get out. I walked a few blocks north to a modern indoor shopping mall where I had a cup of hot chocolate, and then a cone of ice cream the likes of which (hot chocolate and ice cream) you’d never taste stateside. I bought a T-shirt at a Carrefour store the likes of which... etc.
Yes, and as a former Israeli youth, the Holocaust was such a defining moment for our parents/grandparents generation that even something like that gets “old” and you get numbed to it.
Our history class is basically: the whole world hates you and has attempted to kill you in this year, this year, this series of years, that year, the other year, now, and tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow.
It gets grating.
Yes, I know the preceding is flip and incidentaly raises deep theological issues, but that was my attitude when I was 15.
Israeli teenagers want to get drunk and lucky on a trip to Europe, preferably with someone who does not look like their cousin.
LOL! As I said, the same, the world over.
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