The 9th annual Youth Aliyah visit to Poland saw 130 high school students participate in the week-long event, which was funded by Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. The itinerary took students from Hadassah Neurim, Ramat Hadassah Szold, Meir Shfeya and other residential villages and day centers to concentration camps, the Warsaw Ghetto and places which recalled the rich heritage of Eastern European Jewry.

The delegation included among others Barbara Goldstein Deputy Director Hadassah Israel, Ehud Haviv, Hadassah Israel's Financial Advisor, Dr. Etti Serok, Director of Frankel Center, Eli Ofir, Manager Youth Aliyah's Unit of Preparatory Villages and Yossi Krothamer, Director of Ben Yakir.

Leah Reicin, Youth Aliyah Chair of Hadassah, was on her second visit to the concentration camps. She recalls that this visit was more difficult than the first because she knew what to expect.

“Poland and the Shoah give rise to so many questions and so very few answers,” she observed on her return. “However, our children are an answer to a world that sought to destroy us. Our Youth Aliyah children who tour Poland with the flag of Israel wound around their shoulders are an answer. Our Youth Aliyah children who sing Hatikvah in the streets of Warsaw, Krakow, and Lublin are an answer. Our children--our future--our success--they are the reason Hadassah supports the “It is My Brother and Sister I seek” tour of Poland.”

One of the teenage participants from Hadassah Neurim said. "It's one thing to learn about the Holocaust from text books. But when you are there it really hits you that all these horrors really happened."

Tamuz 5764 - July 2004