Feb 9, 2006 -- Days into their trip to Germany in January, a contingent of students from Yeshiva University High School for Boys (YUHSB) had the thrilling experience of watching themselves on the national news. The group of twenty boys had just spent the day—the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, designated by the United Nations as Holocaust Memorial Day—getting to know a group of Catholic high school students, explaining their Orthodox customs and observances, and enjoying a tour of Berlin led by the German group. A camera crew from RBB, the German state television news station, shadowed them throughout their activities. “Some of our students had never met a German before,” said Daniel Schuval, director of student life at YUHSB, “and although the German students have a Holocaust program every year, and some had even visited Israel, this was their first serious encounter with a Jew. One of them commented how positive it was to spend Holocaust Memorial Day with ‘a living Jew who was my age.’” The trip was subsidized by the German government and arranged in conjunction with Bridge of Understanding, which takes young Jewish Americans to Germany to educate them about its modern-day culture, society, and politics. (It was separate from another winter break trip sponsored by YU’s Center for the Jewish Future.) The trip’s mission was to learn about the history, politics and sociology of one of the most influential nations in the world and to encourage students to move beyond simplistic stereotyping of whole peoples, said Mr. Schuval. Students traveled to Berlin and Munich, where they met with government officials, educators, rabbis and Jewish communal leaders, and spent time exploring the rich heritage of the German Jewish community. It was the first group of Orthodox high school students from the United States to officially visit Germany since World War II. Moshe Aharon, a junior from Queens, said he went on the trip to learn about the people and the country first-hand. “We weren’t there as politicians working toward reconciliation,” Moshe said. “There was a sense of being the younger generation—we and our community and them and their community working together for the future of Israel, Germany, America, and the world. The people define the country, not the buildings and statues and museums.”