IDF Soldiers’ Visits to Extermination Camps in Poland: The Experience and Its Effects on Soldiers’ Attitudes

Studies in the tourism and human-resource management fields tend to ignore the use made of heritage tourism as a tool to reward employees. ‘Witnesses in Uniform, the Journey to Poland,’ whose participants are members of the Israeli Defence Force’s standing army, is an example of a reward system whose goal is to influence the human resource. This research examines the effect of participation in a trip to Poland on the sense of organisational commitment. The study employs a qualitative research methodology, and is based on 32 structured interviews with personnel of the standing army who took part in a journey to Poland, as well as five open interviews with those involved in the management and organisation of the journey. It was found that the journey to Poland had a positive impact on the sense of organisational commitment. The findings contribute to the body of knowledge regarding heritage tourism and human-resource management. On a practical level, the insights that emerge from this research are relevant for the understanding of the use of heritage activities as a tool for human-resource management in public organisations, as well as to the management of Witnesses in Uniform journey.