SA pupils take powerful educational journey to Poland

Last week, 32 pupils from King David and Herzlia high schools took part in the first South African scholar tour to Poland since 2019. It was a deeply moving journey into Jewish history and memory for the Grade 11s and 12s. 

In Warsaw, they explored the legacy of what was once Europe’s largest Jewish community, visiting the vast Jewish cemetery, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the site of the Ghetto Uprising. The day ended with mincha and kaddish at the Treblinka extermination camp. 

At the historic Lublin Yeshiva, founded by Rabbi Meir Shapiro, they studied Torah, before visiting Majdanek, one of the most intact Nazi camps, offering a stark insight into the machinery of genocide. In Lizhensk, they visited the grave of Rabbi Elimelech Weisblum, a founder of Chassidism. 

The group paid tribute in the Buczyna Forest near Tarnow, where more than 1 000 young Jews were murdered, and continued to Brzesko to learn about pre-war Jewish life and Holocaust survivor Dov Landau. In Kraków, they visited Oskar Schindler’s factory, the Alte Shul, and the Remu Synagogue. 

The journey culminated at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where pupils honoured the memory of more than one million Jews murdered there. 

Over four days, they reflected deeply on the lessons of the Holocaust, concluding with an emotional singing of Hatikvah. 

Students thanked Rabbi Ramon Widmonte for leading the tour, as well as Rabbi Ilan Raanan and Bev Rosenfeld for initiating and accompanying the programme.