Published: 23 January 2024
Last updated: 2 May 2024
Only a few studies have been conducted on the emotional impact on teens of visits to Auschwitz and other Holocaust memorial sites in Poland.
The most relevant to Australian-Jewish high-schoolers is a 2013 pilot study of Israeli teens’ trips to Poland, co-authored by a Sydney psychiatrist. A more recent, larger study of non-Jewish, Polish high school students also makes some pertinent findings in relation to the psychological consequences of visiting Auschwitz.
The 2013 study by Professor Garry Walter, a psychiatrist affiliated with The University of Sydney, together with three Israeli colleagues, looked at the mental health impact of Israeli teens’ “Holocaust memorial journeys”. Walter and his co-authors didn’t assess teens directly, they surveyed 50 child and adolescent psychiatrists and residents in Israel.
One of the study’s central findings was that the trip to Poland – which at the time was not compulsory for Israeli high-schoolers – appeared to trigger a variety of mental health problems, including psychosis, but only one case of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The study had no data about how long those mental health issues lasted, but the authors recommended that “high risk” teens be evaluated before the trip (although they didn’t say what makes a teen “high risk”).
In comments to the media after the study was published, Walter said those findings shouldn’t be interpreted in an alarming way. “With appropriate support before, during and after, the trip [to Poland] can be a most rewarding experience,” he said. Indeed, the study’s authors emphasised that the support received by all adolescents before, during, and after visiting Poland would be likely to influence the trip’s psychological impact.
