Poland maintains ban on armed guards for Israeli school groups
Warsaw says presence of security personnel creates impression Poland is unsafe; incident is latest in string of spats between the two countries in recent years
WARSAW, Poland — Poland has upheld its ban on Israeli school groups using armed guards during visits to the country, including to former Nazi concentration camps.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Lukasz Jasina was quoted by PAP news agency on Tuesday as saying: “We are ready to receive Israeli excursions in Poland if they are not accompanied by armed security guards.”
Jasina spoke after Israeli Ambassador to Poland Yacov Livne last week said Israeli school visits had been banned “because of the decisions taken by the Polish Foreign Ministry.”
The issue is over visits organized by Israel’s Education Ministry for high school children, which have been suspended since June.
Interviewed on a regional radio station in Lublin in eastern Poland, Jasina said there were no armed guards for Israeli school children on visits to France and Germany, which could create the impression they were more in danger in Poland than in those countries.
Poland and Israel have fallen out repeatedly in recent years, most recently over a new Polish law seen as curbing the claims of Jewish families whose properties were seized after World War II.
Poland was invaded and occupied by Adolf Hitler’s regime in 1939, and never had a collaborationist government. Members of Poland’s resistance and government-in-exile struggled to warn the world about the mass killing of Jews, and thousands of Poles risked their lives to help Jews.
However, Holocaust researchers have collected ample evidence of Polish villagers who murdered Jews fleeing the Nazis, or Polish blackmailers who preyed on helpless Jews for financial gain. Six million Jews, including nearly all of Poland’s roughly 3 million Jews, were killed by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust, and major Nazi death camps were in Poland.
Young Israelis traditionally travel to Poland in the summer between 11th and 12th grade to tour former Nazi camps in order to learn about the Holocaust and memorialize those murdered.
The trip has long been considered a milestone in Israeli education and, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, some 40,000 Israeli students participated each year. About 7,000 were registered to go this past summer, according to the Education Ministry.
