Monday, Oct 2 | Krakow (D)

Guests will arrive in Krakow, the country’s second-largest city, and travel independently to the Bachleda Luxury hotel. Housed in an historic 19th-century building and done in a classic art deco style, the hotel showcases breathtaking views of the Vistula bend and is just a few minutes walk from the Main Market Square. The group will gather for a welcome dinner together at a traditional Polish restaurant near the hotel. 

Tuesday, Oct 3 | Krakow (B,L)

The group will explore the city of Krakow for our first morning together.  This will include walking the Royal Route, Market Square, and Jagiellonian University with the site of the city’s first Jewish kehilat. Later, we’ll visit the former Jewish district of Kazimierz with its shops and art galleries alongside synagogues and praying houses. “It is particularly stunning,” says Brad. “This was the Jewish heart of the city for hundreds of years, and they are now really trying to represent that pre-WWII Jewish history and hosting festivals every summer.”

We’ll visit the 16th-century Remuh synagogue, named after Rabbi Moses Isserles, a small house of worship and one of the most renowned synagogues in the world. We will also visit the Tempel synagogue, built in 1862 in an architectural blend of Moorish and neo-Romanesque styles. Both an active synagogue and cultural center, it hosts performing artists and concerts every summer for the city’s Jewish Culture Festival. If time allows, we can also visit Kupa synagogue and its rich paintings depicting biblical scenes and holy places or the Galicja Jewish Museum with photo exhibitions tracing Polish-Jewish history.  

In the late afternoon, we’ll travel to the famous Salt Mine in Wieliczka, one of the country’s biggest tourist attractions, where rock salt had been mined since the 13th century. As the oldest mine in Europe, it was inscribed in the very first UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage list in 1978. The tour includes 20 historic chambers, which reach 327 meters deep and are connected by two kilometers of passages.

We will return to the Bachleda Luxury hotel in the evening and have dinner separately. 

Wednesday, Oct 4 | Krakow | Kazimierz Dolny | Lublin (B,L)

The next morning, we will climb aboard a luxury tour bus with oversized windows to enjoy the view of the Polish countryside for during drive to Kazimierz Dolny, a small historic town on the bank of the Vistula. After lunch at a local cafe, we’ll visit the town synagogue and Jewish cemetery before heading to Lublin to check in to the IBB Hotel Grand Hotel Lublin. This beautifully renovated hundred-year-old building with interiors in the Belle Epoque style is located in the heart of Lublin.

Thursday, Oct 5 | Lublin (B,L)

The day will start with a walking tour through Lublin’s Old Town. We’ll tour Market Square and “Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre,” a government institution dedicated to preserving cultural heritage located at the Grodzka Gate, the “Jewish Gate” that historically used to be the passage from the Christian to the Jewish part of the city. We’ll tour the Majdanek Museum, the education center on the grounds of the Majdanek death camp. There will be a special arranged visit to Chohamei Lublin Yeshiva. “This was one of the largest and most impressive yeshivas in the world in the 1930s, known at that time as the ‘Academy of the Sages of Lublin,’” says Pomerance. We’ll also see both the Old and New Jewish Cemeteries.

After lunch together, we’ll tour the House of Words, also part of the “Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre.” This fascinating cultural collective and museum of typography is based on a fully functional printing house. We will also stop by the 14th-century Chapel of the Holy Trinity, also known as Lublin Castle Chapel, a UNESCO site.

Friday, Oct 6 | Lublin | Warsaw (B,D)

From Lublin, we’ll travel to Warsaw. After checking into the 5-star deluxe Bristol Hotel — superbly located near Warsaw’s Old Town — we’ll begin our guided visit of Poland’s capital city, including its most important Holocaust memorials. We’ll see the remaining fragments of the ghetto wall; the Monument of the Heroes of the Ghetto; the Umschlagplatz, the site for the deportation of Warsaw’s Jews to Treblinka; and the Jewish cemetery. 

After an emotional day, we’ll enjoy a sweet Shabbat dinner with local Jewish community members. 

Saturday, Oct 7 | Old Town Warsaw (B,D)

We’ll be free this morning to explore the city on our own or attend services at the Nożyk Synagogue. Built in 1898, this is Poland’s most recent synagogue, located a short walk from the hotel. A walking tour of Warsaw later in the day will include Warsaw’s Old Town, Market Square, and the Barbican (the surviving remnant of Old Town’s defensive structure). Finally, we’ll break for lunch on our own in the Old Market Square, an area filled with street vendors, cafés, shops, galleries, and some of Warsaw’s top restaurants. We’ll also visit the impressive Polin: Museum of the History of Polish Jews on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto. This historical museum presents 1,000 years of Jewish life in the Polish lands.

Sunday, Oct 8 | Warsaw | Lodz  (B,D)

To start the day, we’ll have a group visit to the Jewish Historical Institute, also known as the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute. “This is a unique experience. Ringelblum, a hero of the Warsaw Ghetto, buried a treasure trove of documents,” explains Pomerance. “They were chronicling these events as they were happening to ‘let the world read and know.’ It’s called the Oneg Shabbat Underground Archive, and these recovered papers can now be studied at the institute.”

We’ll travel to Lodz and check into the modern Puro Lodz Centrum hotel, located in the city center and close to Piotrkowska street with all its restaurants, cafes, bars, and shops. Known as the Manchester of Poland, Lodz had a thriving textile industry, which Jews were an integral part of throughout the early 20th century. Jewish families owned 175 factories here, including the I. K. Poznański factory, one of Europe’s largest textile plants. We will visit the Radegast train station historical site (used as the Umschlagplatz for the deportation of Jews to extermination camps) and the Lodz Jewish cemetery, once the largest Jewish cemetery in Poland.

We’ll take a ryksza (the modern Polish version of a rickshaw ride) down Piotrkowska, the city’s main boulevard and one of the longest commercial thoroughfares in Europe. We’ll admire the grand Poznanski palaces, see the functioning synagogue of Wolf Reicher, and spend some time at the New Jewish Cemetery, the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe. We’ll visit the former Lodz Ghetto territory with several buildings preserved from that time. 

Monday, Oct 9 | Lodz | Chmielnik | Kraków (B,L)

We’ll continue to the south central town of Chmielnik, just two hours south of Warsaw. Before the war, 80% of the population here was Jewish. We’ll visit the town cemetery and its restored synagogue, which holds the Świętokrzyski Shtetl Education and Museum Center dedicated to the town’s Jewish history. We’ll have lunch at Chmielnik’s Jewish-style restaurant, Cymes, and enjoy a tour enriched with Jewish music and excerpts from Jewish literature depicting life in a shtetl. We’ll spend the night at the 5-star Bachleda Luxury Hotel, located on the bank of the Wisla River, within walking distance of the Wawel Castle and the Kazimierz district. Brad can trace that one of his grandfather’s line to this shtetl as far back as the early 1700s.  

Tuesday, Oct 10 Kraków | Auschwitz (B,L,D) 

On our last full day together, we’ll visit Auschwitz. “This is actually my wife’s grandmother’s hometown. She was one of ten children. Two of them left and the other eight, sadly, stayed here,” says Brad. 

We will begin at the Auschwitz Jewish Center for a tour and lunch, followed by a guided tour of Auschwitz itself. The Auschwitz Jewish Center (AJC) in Oświęcim, operated by the Museum of Jewish Heritage,  is located two miles from the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps. It is the only Jewish presence in the vicinity of Auschwitz. The center opened its doors in 2000 so that people from around the world could gather to learn, pray, and remember the victims of the Holocaust. 

In the evening, we’ll gather for a special dinner at the local center for Ukrainian refugees — operated by the Jewish Community Center of Kraków — at Paszkowka Palace.  “Seeing Jewish people helping these Ukrainian refugees here — in Poland — is profoundly meaningful,” adds Pomerance.

Wednesday, Oct 11   Depart Kraków (B)

Check out and depart Kraków at your leisure.