Holocaust tourism

[3] The term Holocaust, first used in the late 1950s, was derived from the Greek word holokauston meaning a completely burnt offering to God.

Erica Lehrer considers this Jewish identity quest as "a way to step into the flow of family, community, and history from which one feels displaced".

The relationship between those two countries in Holocaust tourism was best illustrated by the anthropologist Jack Kugelmass who employed a 'performance approach' to the Shoa group missions.

By identifying with the Shoa dead, the participants seek to reaffirm their own vulnerability ... as opposed to their privileged position as Jews in American society, while pledging to resist assimilation.

[11] Death and labor camps were built in Central Europe by the German occupational authorities in the late 1930s and early 1940s, many of them in Poland, of which Auschwitz was the first and largest.

Polish journalist and Jewish activist Konstanty Gebert noted: People tend to forget that the important thing about Polish Jews is not that they waited 900 years for the Germans to come and kill them, but that they actually did something for those 900 years.Anthropologist Jack Kugelmass wrote that the American trips to Poland, sponsored by the Israeli Ministry of Education, promote death rather than life, because the Holocaust sites allow for a strong emotional appeal to a mythologised identity.

[10] By the same token, the propagandist messages imposed by the organizers upon students participating in the Shoah voyages are nationalistic rather than universalistic, and inevitably, impact on their empathy toward the Palestinians as well.

[10] The criticism of the Shoah group missions by the Israeli News and Opinion had focused on its economic aspect, with individual members calling for a generalized boycott of Poland's Holocaust-related sites.

In order to stop the infusion of tourism monies,[14] prominent Rabbis advocated that Jews refrain from going to Poland even if they wished to participate only in the official March of the Living.

Quest tourists have specific motivations and may be characterized by the following features: There are three communities on the internet in which Jewish-related concerns and news are disseminated, particularly regarding Holocaust tourism in Germany and across Central Europe.