A Jewish educator visiting the Auschwitz death camp in Poland last Sunday was harassed for carrying an Israeli flag on the train tracks to the historical site.
In a Thursday interview with The Jerusalem Post, Jerusalem Education Institute founder and senior educator Charlotte Korchak explained that the encounter actually became a moment of pride in which the resolve of the students she had accompanied was the true highlight of the story.
Korchak had been visiting Krakow to attend a wedding with her boyfriend and his mother and decided to visit Auschwitz, where her boyfriend’s great-grandparents are believed to have lost their lives. Getting tickets on short notice wasn’t easy, but Korchak was able to join a Miami Jewish students’ group led by a rabbi whom she had done educational training with in the past.
Korchak spent the weekend with the students, going on tours and engaging in activities with them.
At first, the visit to the death camp was without incident but a “meaningful and powerful” experience for the students. The students and the rabbi decided to all walk out of the camp together, a testament to the survival of the Jewish people despite the malicious plans of groups like the Nazis.
They quietly sang “Am Yisrael Chai” – the people of Israel live – as they walked toward the camp’s exit. Korchak said it was impactful to hear the singing swell with emotion and to see the sense of pride that had been instilled in the students.
Thinking this was her final moment with the student group, Korchak said her farewells and left the camp to take one last picture with an Israeli flag on the infamous train tracks that led so many European Jews to their death. It was then that another woman left the camp and began to approach her, Korchak recalled.
THE EDUCATOR felt as if the encounter began to unfold in slow motion as she held hope that the person approaching might be amicable – a hope soon dashed by her aggressive posture. “Are you ashamed?” The woman demanded, pointing at the Israeli flag draped around Korchak’s shoulders.
It was then that the student group exited the camp, and onlookers began to film the exchange.
Korchak, who has been educating Jewish groups about Israel for 20 years, expected such interactions on campus, but on the train tracks to Auschwitz represented a new low for anti-Israel activists. She refused to allow herself to be berated in front of the students. The moment became about showing the students that one shouldn’t cower in front of harassers.
“You’re not doing this in front of a bunch of Jews outside of Auschwitz. Walk away,” Korchak said in a video of the incident viewed by the Post. “This isn’t your story.”
The heckler said that she didn’t care, retorting, “You are killing children.”
“No, Hamas is killing children,” replied Korchak.
Jewish students kept their composure
One of the students raised their voice, asking the woman if she knew what happened during the October 7 massacre. Korchak attempted to keep the kids calm and told them not to yell. Yet aside from this student’s outburst, the veteran educator told the Post that she felt that the students’ composure was remarkable.
“Do you know how many people have died since October 7?” The woman shot back at one of the students.
Korchak interceded, asking her, “Do you know how many Germans died during this war?”
The woman wasn’t interested in listening, Korchak reflected on Thursday. The educator explained that the October 7 massacre was a genocide, just a less successful one because there was an Israeli military to intervene. People refused to make the connection between what happened to Jews when they had no one to protect them and the context of the ongoing war in the Levant.
“My friends were harmed because of you,” the woman accused, according to the video.
“My friends were murdered at the Supernova music festival,” said Korchak. “My friends were murdered in a suicide bombing.”
Korchak added that the heckler should understand that hate wouldn’t help anyone.
“Stop hating me and instead ask me not why I am ashamed and why I support them. You asked me if I was ashamed of myself, and the answer is no, I will never be ashamed to wear this flag, and I will never be ashamed of being a Jew. It’s not complicated, because this is what happens to us,” Korchak said, referring to the Nazi death camp.
The heckler insisted that she was not saying anything against Jews because she had Jewish friends, but a student pointed out that the symbol that offended her was the flag of the country of the Jews. Korchak asked her why she had come to the site if she was unwilling to learn the actual history.
Speaking to the Post on Thursday, Korchak said that there is a certain degree of cognitive dissonance when it comes to the Holocaust and Israel.
Some could make no connection between what happened when Jews had no means of protecting themselves and the mission of the Jewish state to ensure that another Holocaust couldn’t happen.
PEOPLE SUCH as the heckler pretended that the story of the Holocaust ended in 1945 and didn’t consider where the Jews that left the camps went. Many delegations bring Israeli flags when visiting Holocaust sites because they serve as a “security blanket,” a statement of defiance against those that would see the Jews as gone – Israel would prevent that from happening again.
The Jewish educator attempted to explain this to the heckler and how the Jews were now attempting to defend themselves after repeated endeavors to destroy them, but she refused to listen, calling the explanation the “words of a Zionist.”
The Jewish students broke into singing Am Yisrael Chai once again, drowning out the heckler until she left in frustration.
Korchak wished the woman had approached the situation more productively, coming to Auschwitz with an open mind rather than coming with inverted narratives about the Jews committing a Holocaust now.
“I wish you would have walked up to me and just asked me ‘Why are you holding a flag?’ – because then we could have had a conversation,” Korchak addressed the woman when speaking to the Post. “That’s how you solve problems, by giving the benefit of the doubt and asking questions.”
Instead, the harasser had sought to make Korchak crumble on the train tracks of Auschwitz, something that Korchak and the students couldn’t abide. Standing up to harassment wasn’t a message to the woman, but something they did for themselves. The student showed everyone how Jews could stand up and show pride.
“It’s not about me, and it shouldn’t be about me,” said Korchak. “It’s about the students.”
This was why Korchak created the Jerusalem Education Institute last year: “to renovate Israel education for the next generation.”
“It starts with more knowledge, which leads to pride – pride to stand up in moments like this.”