I am completely amazed at how little self-respect you Jews have for one another. 3 million of your people were slaughtered in Poland by Poles who hated Jews more than they hated mosquitos. And now you try and patch things up with these murderers by sending your kids there to see the good side of Poland?? And when one of your own speaks up and says that this does not make sense, you jump all over him as though he were a kook. I have never seen a bigger bunch of self-hating people, who have no self-respect, and no sense of the word "honor". If it weren't for your special relationship with God, you would all be dead by now.

How come I never read anything that Rabbi Aviner says on any other Israeli media site except Yediot? Does he have a contract that any narishkeit he says has to be released solely to YNet?

Talula is correct. Our kids & the future generation of kids must know & what happened during the Holocuat by experiencing trips to the death camps.Its no use burying our heads in the sand.

YNet loves the stage, each media has his stage, looks like a lot of fools read YNet ...

It must be the right thing to do. I notice a lot of so called Jews who live in Israel don't know their **** from a hole in the ground, when it comes to the source of their existence. My grandfather help designed the death camps, so I think my opinion carries a little more weight most pretend-Jews in Israel. No matter what Rabbi Aviner says, It angers me how disrespectful Israeli citizens can be to anyone religious.

I don't agree with his halachic explanations, but what he's saying is essentially correct. The Poles are beneftitting off of our murders which they helped facilitate. I don't agree with these trips.

He has a point but he neglected to say some things. It is true that you should not leave Israel except for the sake of a mitzvah but you can just help a Babbie on the plain or give 5 cents to tzidakah or something. Ant the camps are there so we will not forget, unless of corse the rabbi wants to debate that also

CRAFTED FOR SELECTED COMMMENTS TO BE PUBLISHED FOR RELIGIOUS BASHING !

the Nazis bult the death camps in Poland.

I wish I did not have to use such strong words. However when I read the words of Margot/Cambridge and others, I am very concerned. R Aviner is quoting standard Halacha. Halacha is Jewish law. It is strong law with a noble history, and also the precursor of some of English law and a lot of American law. The people who are putting R Aviner down are people who do not know Jewish history or law. You cannot accept the viewpoint that Israel is supposed to stay away from the goyim. This is not medievalism; it is a classic Jewish concept that has to do with maintaining the sanctity of the people. Halachic experts may argue as to how far to go in an area such as traveling to chutz l'erez, but unless you understand what their points turn on, you are just blowing hot and uninformed air. You are like African tribesmen at a football game; clueless, but even worse, you do not know you are and mistake the little that you know for the whole. Your collective display of angry ignorance is an embarrassment.

It is the duty of every jew to remember what happened in the holocaust and therefore it is only commonsense to see for oneself what the Nazis did to our people. I don't care if the halacha permits or not. I visited teresienstadt and it was a very emotional experience for me. This rabbi should shut up and let every jew decide for himself whethere he wants to visit a nazi death camp or not. AM Israel Chai!!!

Why are you on this site--prurient interest--if I were you I would be ashamed of my father, the 'designer', and I certainly would not go on an Israeli site and lecture Jews. I guess you still have those 'designer' genes. So why don't you just shuffle off to Buffalo and put it where the sun don't shine.

...not Rabbi Aviner and his cronies, how a visit to Birkenau affects them. My trip to Poland left me with incredible sadness. I have never forgotten it and I have no regrets going.

I don't feel qualified to discuss Jewish law in this area, but I have been to visit Auschwitz. It is a lifelong lasting impression for me and personally I think honoring the millions of dead like this is a mitzvah, although may be not tecnically.

By stating that "leaving Land of Israel not for sake of mitzvah" is forbidden, he completely delegitimises Jewish life in the diaspora. Moreover, he basically states that the state of Israel should cut all diplomatic and/or business ties with the outer world, effectively isolating ourselves a-la North Korea. Don't know about you, but to me he sounds like a deranged lunatic.

Frank, learn history! Nazis didn't build death camps in Poland, they buit death camps in Generalgouvernement!!! And why there? Because transport problems. However they killed Jews everythere.

One may argue whether it is worth or not to visit former death camps in Poland. But to insult the Rabbi just because you have a different view - I find it disgusting. Also, I think it is worth for everyone to visit US Holocaust Museum. There were no "millions" of Poles murdered in the same camps. Nazis granted us special treatment. Also, it is worth to read MILA 18 book about the uprising in Warsaw getto, it may change one's mind how Poles behaved during WWII. While noble people exist in every nation, at all times, you can not dispute a very long history of Anti-Semitism in Poland and Ukraine. I've lived for 29 years in Belarus, so I know what I am talking about. I do think that it can be actually a mitzvah to visit such places for Israeli teenages. So that they can see it with their own eyes, because growing up in Israel it must be very hard to imagine how can one live being so much hated and being so much helpless to do anything about it. Galia

It is certainly a mitzvah to commemerate the Holocaust, which includes these trips. If we Jews are to be worried about every single anti-semite making money we would become totally isolationists as so many corporations and peole are or have been anti-semetic and many many more we simply do not know about.

B"H Aviner is anything but "prominent Zionist rabbi". See www.aviner.net

I’m Pole. When you visit Auschwitz your eyes will find my family name on the open pages of the register of murdered prisoners of that camp. On it’s walls you will see the same name on the graphic arts which once were chosen as the most movingly describing the horrors which happened in that place. I’m Pole who as all teenagers here with my school class visited that place, and was made totally dumbstruck by that so tangible there pain. I’m the one who stood there crying for all those lost souls. Do your really think it also has happened because it’s a commercial enterprise which aim is to make Polish economy grow? Do you really think that’s the reason why with each year there are more and more Poles who walk beside you in the March of the Living? Yes, of course there were some who collaborated with the Nazis, but please don’t forget that Poland was the only place in the world where for offering help to Jews the German invaders in the name of introduced by them law were killing – and not only the helping one, but also all his or her family, quite often also their neighbors too. Yes, maybe not enough trains were blown up, maybe not big enough number of people had the courage to risk the lives of their loved ones, but still many Polish names can be seen in the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations. The years when Germans occupied Poland were times of terror, mass killing, hunger and poverty, when as never before the truth about human nature was exposed. That was the most difficult exam, the one which not everyone managed to pass, but here not the race or religion mattered, but what people had in their hearts and souls. You’re right , there were other painful events in the history of relations between Jews and Poles. Seldom I agree with our politicians, but that one time when the President of my country bent his head and asked all the Jewish people for forgiveness for what happened in Jedwabne, in unison I spoke every single word with him. Believe me for years we’ve tried hard to undo what was wrong, though it’s impossible to turn back the history. There’s still a lot to do, but if you allow young and old Israeli to visit my country - with open hearts, eyes and minds, there’s a great chance that there will be no place for more unjust generalizations, that our united memory will preserve also the next generations from such tragedies as Holocaust.

This is what I mean. Neither of these guys understands Halacha. 1)you cannot make up your own mizwoth and 2) no, what R Aviner said does not negate doing business in chutz and 3)there are scholarly opinions by Jewish greats such as the Ramban that you cannot be a complete Jew living in chutz but you have to look at them and see what they really say. Get a torah education, guys, and keep an open mind.

Instead of being proud of your grandfather for designing the death camps you should be ashamed of yourself & him. I hope your grandfather was caught & paid dearly for what he did.

THE HOLOCAUST IS NOT A MITZVAH. Yes, we must remember it. Yes, we must demand others remember it. However, that memory is not for the purpose of establishing a new mitzvah (G-d forbid), or establishing a new religion (G-d forbid), but because we need to remember and demand that others remember so that such a horrific event never happens again. Yes, I understand that we must honor the memories of those who perished, but what better way than to remember them, light a candle for them, pray for them from the heart of Israel? We don’t go to the spot where someone was murdered to honor them, that would be--and is--disrespectful to their memory. I know that Judiasm has been replaced by Holocaustism, and the Jews who practice Holocaustism feel they have been attacked. Good. Don't you know, when you don't live as a Jew, that you are letting Hilter win?

We'll call him Rabbi myopia. What a pathetic excuse for Judiasm.