#sorry for locking the post idk if i can handle it breaching the cointainment zone :(

[ilhoonftw]

ok idk how widespread this information is but i grew up in kraków (cracow) and that's a touristy town. it's the capital of małopolska (lesser poland) voivodeship and it's rather close to both oświęcim and wieliczka. oświęcim is the city where nazis decided to built auschwitz at, when poland was occupied. before ww2 oświęcim a large jewish community. wieliczka is the city where a salt mine is located, very cool place. kraków itself has a district called kazimierz that used to be a place where both polish and jewish cultures co-existed, it has a lot of landmarks. it's also very gentrified but that's a story for another day. on the other side of river wisła (vistula) you can visit the schindler factory that was turned into a museum

the fact a lot of tourists come to the region to tour around those places. i mean it makes sense, you buy a tour package l, land in kraków airport, tour all those places at once. however you can say the order of things became a bit of a... paradox? isn't it weird that one day you go to a place where so many people lost their lives only to hours later enjoy the beauty of a salt mine. last time i went to mocak, an art museum next to the schindler museum, you had to pass through an outdoor art instaltion. it's a tunnel that has 'auschwitz wieliczka' and it's supposed to show the ... irony? idk the right word. the installation was moved couple times, it even ended up getting locked up in a warehouse due to weirdos constantly destroying it by spray painting terrible things on it.

and after this long intro, here's the main thing i want to you to know. in my community it was known that israel plans special tours for young people to show them the history. i used to see groups of tourists on the ghetto heroes square. it's also a home to an art installation, sculptures of chairs are meant to commemorate those who lost their lives. allegedly due to "previous unruly behavior" some hotels ban those groups from booking but idk how legit this info is.

those trips to poland are called shoah tours and organized for high school kids. that also are yet to enlist in the idf. could you say it is using a past tragedy to invoke some sort of duty to protect the country? they are widely criticized, both by polish and israeli researchers. there's this very known in poland documentary about them, showing how supposedly israeli kids are told polish people are hostile and will hurt them if they aren't careful? again, that's alleged. that documentary is unfortunately often used by antisemites. this is another long story i do not have the expertise to explain. it's upsetting in general. you have young minds being, maybe this is a strong word but, poisoned. every young person should be taught ways to make independent decisions and develop ways to analyze things on their own, not to be told what to think. also, there's a rumour that those kids and their teacher are accompained by mossad agent? some are so sure of this they play 'spot the oddly looking teacher with concealed weapon' whenever they see a large group of high school kids walking around the areas i mentioned at the start of the post, wit a guide that speaks hebrew

i know there's research done by various sociologists how those tours mostly benefit idf and are used as propaganda tool. in fall 2022 tours were cancelled due to government level conflict between israel and poland. as you can guess, there's a lot of tension there.

thank you for reading this very long post. i want to point out this is a topic i'm familiar with due to growing up in the area, however i moved out a long time ago so my experience as a local might be outdated. nor i'm an expert in the matter of jewish history. this is purely subjective account and i'm sorry if i misrespresented anything