An Israeli high school heritage trip to Poland ended with a dramatic journey home after the US-Israeli strikes on Iran left travelers unable to return to Israel via their scheduled flight.

After being stranded in Krakow following the closure of Israel’s airspace Saturday morning, the delegation of about 90 students in the 11th and 12th grades from the Shacharit religious high schools in Kfar Adumim and Jerusalem returned to Israel Wednesday evening. They got there after being sent by government officials on a trip that took them through Taba, the Egyptian city on Israel’s southern border.

The nearly 24-hour trip was emotional and exhausting for students and faculty, Shacharit principal Roni Hazon Weiss told The Times of Israel. All of the 850 students who were stuck in Poland on various trips have now been brought back safely to Israel, Israeli media reported Thursday.

When the Iran conflict began early Saturday morning, the group was told not to leave the hotel, Hazon Weiss recalled. The morning’s planned visit with Holocaust survivors at the nearby JCC was moved to the hotel, and additional security was brought in.

The students’ return flight on Monday was canceled, “and at that point, we didn’t know how we were going to get back,” she said.

Later, she was told that repatriation flights would be arranged through Taba. Apprehensive regarding the challenges of such a trip, Hazon Weiss asked the Association for the Advancement of Education, which runs the schools and arranged the trip, if the school’s flight could be delayed until after other similar flights were completed, so she could see how those went.

That was a smart decision, she later learned. “There was a lot of chaos for the first flights,” she said. “There were groups stranded in Egypt for hours without water before they were cleared to travel towards Israel. Because we traveled later, we got to avoid a lot of that.”

Flights to Taba for other schools were organized by the Education Ministry and the Shin Bet, according to news reports. Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport was reopened to limited repatriation flights on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the group was moved to a different hotel on Sunday, and its planned trip to the Auschwitz concentration camp was canceled. Students channeled their energies and anxieties into organizing a pre-Purim party in the new location, ahead of the festive holiday on Monday night and Tuesday, Hazon Weiss recalled.

As it became clear that their stay would be extended, the Auschwitz visit was moved to Monday, which happened to be the Fast of Esther, observed the day before Purim, which added significance to the visit.

“That was very special,” Hazon Weiss said.

Monday evening, the group joined the local community at the JCC for the traditional Megillah reading and a Purim celebration, and on Tuesday morning, they attended a second Megillah reading and enjoyed an extensive Purim feast. All of the additional expenses of the trip, including accommodations and return flights, were covered by the Association for the Advancement of Education, Hazon Weiss noted.

Around 11 p.m. on Tuesday night, the group boarded a flight to Warsaw, and then a connecting flight to Taba, which landed around 11 a.m. the following morning, according to 11th grader Yair Barkan, one of the students on the trip.

From there, the group boarded buses that reached the Israeli border around 4 p.m. One of the students’ parents arranged to meet the buses there with sandwiches and drinks — and a bit of singing. After that, it was another four hours until the students arrived in Jerusalem.

“It was hard to be stuck in Poland, and not at home, when the war broke out,” Barkan said. “There was some worry, but we felt that things were organized and that we were in good hands. The trip back was hard, especially after such an intense week in Poland, but we were very happy when we got back home.”

Hazon Weiss said the faculty was in constant contact with parents throughout the journey, and that the school was in touch with Israel’s ambassador to Poland, whose daughter studies at her school.

The trip was demanding and emotionally draining, Hazon Weiss, but the experience was an unforgettable one.

“This is the kind of story we’ll tell our grandchildren,” she said.

Are you relying on The Times of Israel for accurate and timely coverage of the Iran war right now? If so, please join The Times of Israel Community. For as little as $6/month, you will:

Support our independent journalists who are working around the clock under difficult conditions to cover this conflict;

Read ToI with a clear, ads-free experience on our site, apps and emails; and

Gain access to exclusive content shared only with the ToI Community, including weekly letters from founding editor David Horovitz.

We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.

You clearly find our careful reporting of the Iran war valuable, at a time when facts are often distorted and news coverage often lacks context.

Your support is essential to continue our work. We want to continue delivering the professional journalism you value, even as the demands on our newsroom have grown dramatically during this ongoing conflict.

So today, please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community. For as little as $6 a month you'll become our partners while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.

Thank you,David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel

1 Iran threatens to hit Dimona nuclear site if Israel and US try to topple regime

2 IDF planning for at least 1-2 more weeks of Iran ops; over 5,000 bombs dropped

3 Op-edOf course this is Israel’s war in Iran. It’s America’s, too. We’d all better win it

4 Historic Tel Aviv Bauhaus building damaged by Iran missile explosion

5 Iranian missile downed as it heads towards NATO member Turkey

6 US, Israel targeting Iran forces involved in crackdown to enable renewed protests — officials

7 Hegseth: Iran is ‘toast,’ and the US and Israel will rain down ‘death and destruction’

8 Israel eases restrictions on public as rate of Iranian fire declines

2026 US-Israel war with Iran

© The Times of Israel