In 2014, when Shira Chait was a 10th grader at the Israel Arts and Science Academy in Jerusalem, she tried to lead a revolution and restart the tradition of student trips to Poland that ended at her school six years earlier.

Since the 1980s, most Israeli high schools have been sending thousands of students ages 16-18 to Poland. During these one-week trips, the students learn about the Holocaust of the European Jews. They tour ghettos, visit Jewish museums and concentration camps and wave Israeli flags in a show of Jewish victory over the Nazi extermination machine. 

Etay Benovich, the principal of Shira's school, doubts the usefulness of these missions. “When I participated in a program at Yad Vashem [Israel's Holocaust Museum] to prepare for the trip, I felt that going on the mission, as it is today, is something everyone does because you have to, because everyone does it, without stopping and thinking,” he told Al-Monitor. 

Benovich said that the decision to stop sending students to Poland wasn't an easy one. “Students — aside from some protests here and there — actually understood. Parents were the ones who opposed the decision. But as time goes on, the responses have become more positive.” Instead of trips to Poland, Benovich now organizes trips for his students in Israel around the topic of the Holocaust.