TRIP TO POLAND, MAY 2015 THE PROGRAM OF THE TOUR

Foto: Ewa Held

Day 1: Warsaw Arrival in Warsaw - transfer to the hotel Depending on the arrival time - short afternoon tour of historic Warsaw If arrival on Wednesday-start of the tour on Thursday morning- tour of historic Warsaw and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews Accommodation in Warsaw - to be confirmed Dinner at the hotel or city restaurant Theatre performance or Concert?

Foto: Renata Zawadzka-Ben Dor

Day 2: Warsaw After breakfast - full day tour: “The Warsaw Ghetto” (the former area of the Warsaw ghetto - remains of the

ghetto walls, synagogue, monuments and historical sites including the Monument to the Heroes of the

Warsaw Ghetto, the Remembrance Path, Mila 18 Monument and Umschlagplatz Monument, Jewish

cemetery, Optional – Jewish Historical Institute (exhibition and film), Optional – the Museum of the

History of Polish Jews (note one optional admission possible – according to your choice, the second one can

be scheduled on the first day depending on the arrival time) During the day free time for lunch Accommodation in Warsaw – to be confirmed Shabbat Dinner

Treblinka Concentration Camp sign by David Shankbone CC BY-SA 3.0

szylt znajduje sie w Yed Vashem

Day 3: Tykocin - Lopuchowo - Treblinka After breakfast – departure for full day tour by bus:

Tykocin: once an important trade centre owned by Polish kings, by 1800 became a typical Jewish shtetl.

Before WW2, the town had 5,000 inhabitants, half of them Jewish. All of the 2,500 Jewish residents of

Tykocin were taken to the nearby Lopuchowo forest and shot by the Nazis in the Summer of 1941. Today

Tykocin looks the same as it did before WW2 – you can still see Jewish wooden houses, one of the finest

synagogues in Poland built in 1642 (now museum) and admire the perfect harmony of both Christian and

Jewish architecture. Visit to the Tykocin synagogue

Lopuchowo: mass graves and memorial in the forest commemorating the extermination site of Tykocin Jews

Treblinka Memorial: Treblinka, established in 1941 as a forced labor camp for Poles is located 110 km

(68 miles) northeast of Warsaw. Within a year a second camp was built which became a symbol of the

extermination of the central European Jews. Opened on July 23, 1942, as the Warsaw ghetto deportation

began it resulted in total 900 thousand victims. Handled with the utmost of secrecy, surrounded by two

barbed wire fences was a scene of organized revolt of Jewish prisoners in August 1943, after which was

liquidated in October 1943. Today a symbolic memorial monument and 17 thousand stones mark the site

of Jewish tragedy…

Lunch en-route, evening return to Warsaw. Accommodation in Warsaw – to be confirmed 380 km

Foto: Wikipedia

Day 4: Warsaw – Wlodawa – Sobibor - Lublin After breakfast - departure by bus to:

Włodawa: a town in eastern Poland on the Bug River, close to the borders with Belarus and Ukraine.

Once a Jewish shtetl which had a representative in the Council of the Four Lands (central body of Jewish

authority in Poland from 1580 to 1764). Włodawa was over 70% Jewish before World War II and the

Holocaust. Situated next to the Sobibor extermination camp, Włodawa Jews were mostly rounded up and

deported there, or killed locally in any one of the German arbeitslagers (workcamps). Visit to the

Włodawa Synagogue (Wlodowa Synagogue) - an architectural complex consisting of 2 historic

synagogues and a Jewish administrative building, now preserved as a museum. The complex includes the

Włodawa Great Synagogue of 1764–74, the late 18th century Small Synagogue, and the 1928 community

building. It is "one of the best-preserved" synagogues in Poland

Sobibor Memorial - a Nazi German extermination camp located on the outskirts of the village of Sobibór.

Jews from Poland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union were

transported to Sobibór by rail and suffocated in gas chambers fed by the exhaust of large petrol engines.

One source states that up to 200,000 people were murdered at Sobibór.

Lublin – check in and dinner 330 km

Day 5: Lublin After breakfast - tour of Jewish Lublin: the former pre-war Jewish part of Lublin and Lublin ghetto area: visit to

the new Jewish cemetery, Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva (the famous modern Talmudic academy opened on June

24 and 25, 1930), if time allows – the Old Jewish cemetery. Brama Grodzka Center. Follow with Lublin

“German district” to see Action Reinhardt High Command buildings where the “Final solution plan” was

supervised by Odilo Globocnik, the commander of SS and Gestapo Police of the Lublin District

During the day free time for lunch Accommodation in Lublin - to be confirmed Dinner at the hotel or city restaurant

Obóz na Majdanku 05 kjkCC-BY-SA-3.0-pl

Day 6: Lublin - Trawniki - Izbica - Zamosc After breakfast departure to Zamosc. On the way:

guided tour of Majdanek Museum - a former concentration and forced labour camp, also used as a death

camp. It was located in a suburb just three miles from Lublin, opened in September 1941, initially for

Soviet POWs, and was liberated by the Soviet Army in July 1944. During this time more than 79,000

people were murdered at Majdanek main camp alone (59,000 of them Polish Jews) and between 95,000

and 130,000 people in the entire Majdanek system of subcamps. Some 18,000 Jews were killed at

Majdanek on November 3, 1943, during the largest single-day, single-camp massacre of the Holocaust,

named Harvest Festival (totalling 43,000 with 2 subcamps)

Trawniki - short stop in Trawniki to see the monument commemorating the former Trawniki concentration

camp which provided slave labourers for nearby industrial plants of the SS Ostindustrie. From September

1941 until July 1944, the camp was also utilized for training guards recruited from Soviet POWs, known

as "Hiwi" (German letterword for 'Hilfswillige', lit. "those willing to help"), for service with Auxiliary

police in occupied Poland. The Trawniki men (German: Trawnikimänner) took part in Operation

Reinhard, the Nazi extermination of Polish Jews. They conducted executions at extermination camps and

in Jewish ghettos including at Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka II, Warsaw, Czestochowa, Lublin, Lvov,

Radom, Krakow, Bialystok, Majdanek as well as Auschwitz, not to mention Trawniki itself.

Izbica - once a notable centre of trade and commerce, with time the town became a shtetl inhabited almost

entirely by Polish Jews. During the WW2 the Izbica Ghetto was set up by the Nazis. The first mass

deportation of ghetto inmates to the Bełżec extermination camp took place in mid-March 1942 conducted

by the Reserve Police Battalion 101 with the aid of Ukrainian Trawnikis. During Operation Reinhard the

ghetto served as a transfer point to the extermination camps in Belzec and Sobibor for foreign Jews

deported from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and western Poland (Reichsgau Wartheland). Of all

Jews of Izbica (over 90% of its prewar population), only 14 survived the Holocaust - one of them is

Thomas "Toivi" Blatt, the Sobibor survivor.

Zamosc - the UNESCO World Heritage site. Zamość is a unique example of a Renaissance town in

Central Europe, consistently designed and built in accordance with the Italian theories of the "ideal town,"

built by the founder, Jan Zamoyski and the outstanding architect, Bernardo Morando. Zamość was a large

center of Chasidic Judaism. The Oahal of Zamość was founded in 1588 when Jan Zamoyski agreed to

settle the Jews in the city. The first Jewish settlers were mainly the Sephardi Jews coming from Italy,

Spain, Portugal and Turkey. In the 17th century, the newcomers were recruited among the Ashkenazi Jews

that soon constituted the majority of the Jewish population.

Accommodation in Zamosc – to be confirmed Lunch en route, dinner independent 120 km

Old City of Zamosc © Narodowy Instytut Dziedzictzwa

Day 7: Zamosc - Szczebrzeszyn - Sandomierz After breakfast:

Jewish and historic Zamosc city tour including visit to the synagogue in Zamosc.

Szczebrzeszyn – Szczebrzeszyn's history can be traced back to 1352 and there is one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in Poland (16th cent) – visit to the Jewish cemetery. Name of Szczebrzeszyn is used in the most difficult sentence in Polish to be pronounced by foreigners “W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie”,

which can be translated to: "In [the town of] Szczebrzeszyn a beetle sounds in the reed". The phrase has

been incorporated in everyday language as an epitome of Polish tongue twisters, and is often presented by

natives to foreign learners of Polish. A monument depicting a cricket playing the violin that was erected in

Szczebrzeszyn refers to this sentence.

Sandomierz – beautiful miedieval town, known for its Old Town, which is a major tourist attraction. In the

past, Sandomierz used to be one of the most important urban centers not only of Lesser Poland, but also of

the whole country. Sandomierz also became a symbol of anti-Jewish stereotypes – in 2 catholic churches

one can see a series of paintings with scenes with ritual murders committed in Sandomierz by Jews on

Christian children. Visit to Sandomierz cathedral church and St Paul's Church to see them.

Accommodation in Sandomierz – to be confirmed Lunch en route, dinner independent 140 km

Foto: The Holocaust in Kazimierz Dolny 02CC0

Day 8: Sandomierz – Poniatowa - Kazimierz Dolny – Przytyk - Łódź After breakfast transfer to Łódź. On the way:

Poniatowa - the memorial site of the former Nazi German concentration camp, later Jewish forced

labour camp, where some 18 thousand Jews were executed during the Operation Harvest Festival

(Aktion Erntefest) of November 4, 1943. The monument in memory of the victims of the Holocaust

was unveiled in Poniatowa on November 4, 2008

Kazimierz Dolny – a picturesque small town on Vistula river, a major tourist attraction of the region with

magnificent old architecture. Jewish community was present in the city from the time of Casimir III the

Great in the 14th century. The king granted the Jews a writ of rights which caused the town to become

a focal point for Jewish immigration. Short walking tour around the town and the remnants of Jewish

past – the synagogue, the cemetery. One of the most famous Jewish residents of the town was the

painter and sculptor Chaim Goldberg. Another was the noted journalist S. L. Shneiderman, who wrote

about Kazimierz Dolny in his book The River Remembers.

Przytyk (with no stop in the town) – pass by the place where the Przytyk Pogrom occurred against the

Jewish community on March 9, 1936. In the opinion of Jewish historian Emanuel Melzer of Tel Aviv

University, it was the most notorious incident of antisemitic violence in Poland in the interwar period,

and attracted worldwide attention, while other historians claim it was not a pogrom.

Łódź – check in, dinner

Accommodation in Łódź – to be confirmed Lunch en route, dinner

313 km

Tora przed synagogą Reicherów w Łodzi, f. Mariusz Kucharczyk

Day 9: Łódź After breakfast full day tour of Jewish Łódź (inc. the Łódź ghetto area, the Radegast deportation station, the cemetery) - itinerary to be confirmed.

In the evening – Jewish cuisine cooking workshop with tasting of self made traditional Jewish meals.

Foto: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Royal-Castle-of-Warsaw_AB.jpg

Day 10: Łódź – Warsaw After breakfast transfer to Warsaw airport (depending on departure time – some free time in Łódź or additional tour of historic Łódź possible – to be confirmed) 130 km