Let us take your group on one of our Jewish heritage tours around Poland. The professional tour leader will meet & greet the group at Krakow's airport. After the 30 minute transfer to the 3* (or better) hotel located in the city centre and the check-in, , the group will meet up with the local licensed guide and go on the orientation walking city tour around the Old Town which is listed as an UNESCO site since 1978 which makes it one of the first 12 sites on the famous list. During the sightseeing tour the group will follow the Royal Route, used for centuries by monarchs and national heroes for celebratory parades.The tour will start at the biggest medieval Market Square in the world, passing through the Cloth Hall, admiring the St. Mary's Church, and listening to the Krakow's famous bugle call. The guide will also lead the group through the University Quarter with Collegium Maius, the oldest building of the Jagiellonian University, the 2nd oldest university in the world. The city tour finishes at the Wawel Hill where the former Residence of Polish Kings - Wawel Castle is situated.

After the walking tour there will be a welcome dinner which will take place at the hotel restaurant.

On the second day, as all the Jewish group tours, our group will follow the traces of Jewish heritage in Krakow. Our guide will meet with the group at the hotel lobby at take them to Jewish Quarter - Kazimierz - best preserved Jewish quarter in Poland, with plenty of synagogues including Old Synagogue (one of Europe's oldest Jewish places of worship) and Remuh Synagogue, which is the only active one in Krakow This sleepy neighbourhood was once a separate city and a vibrant Jewish culture centre. It was destroyed during World War II and after being left neglected for many years, it has recently welcomed visitors again. It is the heart of Krakow bohemian life. Our Krakow guide will show the group places that tell more than a thousand words about Jewish heritage in today’s Krakow.

The visit at the Jewish Museum Galicia can not be missed by any Jewish tour companies so after the walk around the quarter the guide will lead the group there. It will be a special visit as it will be followed with the meeting with witness to history of Holocaust.

Lunch will be arranged in one of the local restaurants serving traditional Jewish cuisine. Then the group will be taken to the former Jewish Ghetto area which was established by Nazis and existed from 1941 to 1943 and see the only remnants of ghetto walls as a great part of it was destroyed. At the end of the tour there will be a private guided tour of Schindler's Factory Museum which has been created in the original enamel factory of Oskar Schindler. Visiting Schindler’s Museum gives an opportunity to discover not only the history of Oskar, but also the history of Krakow during World War II (1939-1945). There are 45 exhibition halls and a rich documentation including plenty of photographs and historical objects.

Dinner at the hotel.

This day will be dedicated to the visit at the biggest Nazi concentration and extermination camp - KL Auschwitz-Birkenau which all Jewish trips to Poland must include.

After breakfast, the group will be picked up from the hotel lobby by one of our professional tour leaders for the full day tour to the Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau. During World War II Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest concentration camp of Nazi Germany. It was established in the suburbs of the city of Oswiecim (Auschwitz in German), 60 kilometres west of Krakow. It took the lives of about 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, but also Poles, Romani, Russian. Liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp took place in January 1945. Before that, Nazi authorities tried to destroy as much evidence of massive murders as possible. After the war, Polish government decided to restore Auschwitz-Birkenau and turned it into a museum. It preserves the memory of concentration and extermination camp and honours victims of Nazism. Nowadays the museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau is on the UNESCO List of World Heritage Sites.

On the way to the museum the group will watch the documentary “Liberation of Auschwitz” that gives a little bit of the background to the history which will be better presented on the spot by one of the local expert guides. The group will spend around 3.5h at camp visiting both parts: Auschwitz I, where the main exhibition is held and Auschwitz II - Birkenau, the memorial site. In the first part of the camp the group will be led by the guide into the camp via the gate with an infamous inscription Arbeit macht frei (Work makes you free). The group will see prisoners’ barracks, places of work and original blocks, where they were being punished. You’ll see railroad tracks that transported people often straight to gas chambers, that were used for extermination. At Auschwitz II - Birkenau, which is located 3 km away from the the main part, the group will see the main gate via which transportation of Jews were driven into the territory of camp, the unloading ramp, ruins of crematoria and gas chambers destroyed by Nazis during the evacuation plan and some original brick or restored wooden barracks. Lunch will be arranged in one of the local restaurants.

Lunch will be arranged in one of the local restaurants. Before leaving for Lodz the group will stop at the Chevrah Lomdei Mishnayot synagogue, the only one left in the area, the place of reflection and prayer.

Dinner at the hotel in Lodz.

Right after breakfast the group will meet up with the local expert guide and spend the morning on the sightseeing of Lodz, the second biggest Jewish community in pre-war Poland, a city strongly associated with the textile industry. Its industrial landscape has been perfectly preserved over the years.

All the Jewish tours start at the Bracka st., at the Jewish cemetery full of monuments of Jewish culture. The next stop will be the Radegast train station where transports destined for extermination camps were formed. The group will also pass the area of the former Jewish ghetto - Litzmannstadt, which was liberated in 1944 as the last one in the whole Europe. The programme of the sightseeing also includes the visit at the Reicher’s Synagogue - the only pre-war synagogue that survived in Łodz and is still active today.

After lunch the group will depart toward Warsaw where after the quick check-in at the hotel the local guide will take the group on the orientation city tour along the Royal Route passing Copernicus monument, where the group will hear stories about the famous Polish astronomer, St. Cross Church where the heart of Chopin lays down, and many others. The Royal route leads toward the Castle Square where the Royal Castle is situated. Then the group will carry onto the oldest part of the Old Town – the Old Town Market Place, where the Warsaw Mermaid, a symbol of the city, has been standing since 1855. Historic Centre of Warsaw is also inscribed onto the UNESCO World Heritage List an outstanding example of a near-total reconstruction of a span of history covering the 13th to the 20th century.

Dinner at the hotel.

On Day 5 of our tour we will take the group on the tour around the former Jewish Ghetto and the place that all Jewish culture tours must have in their programmes - Museum of History of Polish Jews - POLIN.

Right after breakfast the group will be taken on the walking city tour during which they will see Grzybowski Square and Prozna street which is the only remaining street of Warsaw Ghetto and walk around the former Jewish District passing Nozykow Synagogue, remains of Ghetto wall, ruins of Jewish tenement house, and many other places worth seeing. Then the group will take a walk to the Jewish Cemetery in Okopowa street. After lunch they will see the Umschlagplatz from where mass transportations to Treblinka extermination camp took place and visit the Museum of History of Polish Jews- POLIN which is close by.

Dinner at the hotel.

Today the group will visit another Nazi extermination camp - Treblinka. It is located about 100 km away from Warsaw and it is the death spot for approximately 800-900 thousand Jews from Poland and many countries of Western Europe, including about 250 thousand Warsaw ghetto Jews with Janusz Korczak (Henryk Goldszmit) and orphanage children who were under his care. The camp operated between 23 July 1942 and 19 October 1943 as part of Operation Reinhard, the deadliest phase of the Final Solution. The visit consists of: the exposition in the Museum building and visiting the grounds of the former Treblinka II extermination camp and the Treblinka I penal labour camp.

The group will have packed lunch on the bus whilst driving to Kazimierz Dolny, a picturesque Renaissance town on the Vistula river, with a well-preserved synagogue and a Jewish cemetery. This will be one of the first Shtetl included in our programmes of Jewish tours. In the evening, the group will reach Lublin where Orthodox Jews prevailed and their pride was the Yeshivat Hakhmei Lublin renowned all over Europe.

Dinner at the hotel.

After breakfast the group will pay a visit to Majdanek Concentration Camp, another place which should not be missed on any Jewish heritage tours in Central Europe.

This German concentration camp was initiated by Heinrich Himmler’s decision. The camp was going to be the source of a free workforce for the realization of the plans to build a German empire. The camp, built from autumn 1941, was initially a camp for prisoners of war, and in February 1943 became a concentration camp and later also an extermination camp. Prisoners came from nearly 30 countries. Polish citizens dominated (mainly Poles and Jews) but there were also prisoners from the Soviet Union and the Czech Republic (Jews). Apart from Poles and Jews, the Russians, Belorussians, and Ukrainians constituted the largest groups of inmates. From the very beginning of their stay at the camp, the prisoners were inevitably accompanied by hunger, fear, backbreaking work and diseases. 80 000 people lost their lives at the camp during the Nazi occupation. The tragic history of the Lublin concentration camp came to an end on 22 July 1944. The group will visit the most important structures and places related with the camp history. The tour starts at the foot of the Gate Monument, goes along the border of the prisoners’ camp, and finishes near the Mausoleum.

After the visit the group will be taken on the Lublin sightseeing. The city used to be called Jewish Oxford because of the presence of Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva. The group will follow the traces of Jewish heritage in the city with a local licensed guide. After the sightseeing the journey continues to Zamosc.

Dinner at the hotel.

Right after breakfast the group will leave the hotel to explore Zamosc which until the 18th century was the only one centre of Sephardic Jews in Poland. Zamosc used to be a home town of Jizchak Lejb Perez, one of the originators of this marvellous Renaissance town, which is UNESCO World Heritage Listed Site, where the group will have a chance to see Old Synagogue and a building of the ritual Jewish baths.

After the city sightseeing the group will visit an extermination camp in Belzec where approximately 600.000 Jews, who were transported there from ghettos in Krakow, Lublin, Lviv and the surrounding Shtetls, were murdered there in gas chambers within less than a year. The visit consists of the exhibition and a monument commemorating the Belzec victims. Without making a stop there any Jewish heritage tours to Poland would not be complete.

On the way to Lezajsk the group will pass some of pre-war shtetls such as Jozefow, Sieniawa, etc. The town of Lezajsk has become the most significant centre of the Hasidic movement in Galicia thanks to rabbi Elimelech Lippman whose ohel the group will visit.

Dinner at the hotel in Lancut.

Today the group will see various former Jewish towns which are often missed by Jewish travel groups. First on the list is Lancut and its synagogue which is considered to be one of the most impressive synagogues in Poland, built in a baroque style, richly decorated. The group will also find a beautiful aristocratic residence from the 17th century - Lubomirski and Potocki Palace. The guide also will show them the local Jewish cemetery.

After the walk around the city the tour will continue toward Rzeszow, an important centre of Jewish life before the war. The group will spot two synagogues from the 17th century located in the Old Town area.

After lunch the group will go to Tarnow, another significant Jewish town, fourth largest Galician Jewish community. After the check-in they will go on the city tour of Tarnow where they will see a bima of the 17th century synagogue and will visit one of the biggest Jewish cemeteries with over 3000 tombstones.

Dinner in the hotel.

After breakfast the group will head toward Krakow airport but first there will be a small detour so they can visit Bobowa, which once was a centre of Chassidism. The group will see a synagogue and picturesquely situated Jewish cemetery. Nowadays Bobowa is well known also for its lace-making.

Drop off at the airport in Krakow.