Poland has a long history of anti-Semitism, as long as the history of Jews in Poland itself. Anti-Semitism is still widespread there today. Poland is still not confronting its past and current anti-Semitism appropriately. It was a long time before it starting compensating Holocaust survivors and their descendants for their stolen property. Poland had and still has a problem with Jews.
But Poland wasn't responsible for the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a German crime. Yes, plenty of Europeans helped the Germans try to wipe out European Jewry. But the Holocaust was conceived, planned, and executed by the Germans. So the intense Polish sensitivity to attempts to transfer responsibility for the industrial extermination camps from Germany to Poland is understandable. There were plenty of reasons why the Nazi regime elected to set up the biggest death camps in Poland: the large Jewish communities there, plans to repopulate that required "mass evacuation" as well as the German assessment that the Polish hatred for Jews would allow the killing to proceed without any interference from the locals. Many Poles were murdered by the Germans as a result of the insane Nazi race doctrine. More importantly, there were more "righteous gentiles" (gentiles who risked their own lives to save Jews during the Holocaust) in Poland than in any other Nazi-occupied country, and they also outnumbered the Poles who cooperated with the Nazis to carry out the Final Solution.
The evil Polish anti-Semitism, as expressed in the pogroms perpetrated against the few remaining Jewish refugees after the Holocaust and under communist rule – as well as in the attempt over the course of many years to cast the people murdered in concentration camps as Poles rather than Jews – should not distract us from the fact that Germany was and will always bear the sole responsibility for the camps' existence in Poland in the first place.
Absurdly, the traditional Marches of the Living do not begin in Germany and include Berlin, the capital of the Third Reich; Munich, "the Nazi capital"; Nuremberg, where the race laws were enacted and where senior Nazi criminals were later tried; Dachau, the first concentration camp; or Sachsenhausen, the camp where representatives of the Palestinian Mufti Amin al-Husseini learned "how to take care of Jews." From Germany, young Jews could continue on to the death camps in Poland and thus be exposed to the entire process of the Holocaust, not only its end.
Bringing thousands of Jewish young people from Israel and abroad to Germany could be a major contribution to Germany confronting its own past. Marchers carrying Israeli flags through German cities will force the Germans to address anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism, which are both prevalent. The IDF has already started to include Germany in the Witnesses in Uniform program it runs for officers.
There are families who don't have the money to send their children to the March of the Living. This is where Germany has an obligation to step in and preserve the past. Rather than funneling money to left-wing organizations that slander Israel, instead of investing immense sums in the Palestinian Authority that has proven time and again that it clings to its hatred of Jews and Israel, and instead of investing in initiatives whose contribution to humanity is doubtful, the German government could fund the Marches of the Living, along with the trips to Poland, and encourage young Israelis and young Germans to meet and talk about what links them rather than a "solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." It's infuriating that Germany hasn't thought of this on its own. Putting the Holocaust into its proper historical context will allow us to better address anti-Semitism in Poland.
