Jewish Israeli Teenagers, National Identity, and the Lessons of the Holocaust

��� This article examines the attitudes of a group of Jewish Israeli adolescents who participated in a Holocaust seminar that included an optional trip to related sites in Poland. The authors sought to determine whether youth who participate in such a seminar still consider Jewish Israeli identity important, which lessons of the Holocaust they value, and whether belonging to a survivor’s family makes a difference when considering these lessons. The results show that, regardless of participation in the trip and affiliation with Holocaust survivors, the youth hold a strong sense of Jewish Israeli national identity and tend to support Jewish and Zionist lessons more than universalistic ones, although a complex interplay exists between identity and those lessons. Adolescents whose family members included survivors connected a more “power-oriented” interpretation of the Holocaust to a strong sense of national identity; participants not related to survivors developed a more complex frame of reference that combined both power-oriented and humanistic lessons of the Holocaust. Researchers working inside and outside Israel have studied empirically the issues of Israeli identity and the “lessons of the Holocaust.” The topics, though separate, are closely linked, scholars have pointed out. To date, however, few efforts have been made to assess how and if belonging to a family of Holocaust survivors affects the lessons learned and the sense of national identity. In this article, we look at this threeway connection by beginning with a review of literature on Holocaust education within Israel and on lessons of the Holocaust. We then turn to the topic of national identity within Jewish Israeli society and a short review of the literature to date on the “third generation”—the grandchildren of the survivors—before presenting our research results.