Day 1 Sunday, Oct 19

Depart Newark Airport 5.50 PM. Eleven people depart Newark Airport on United Airlines 962 for Berlin.
Dinner and breakfast are served onboard.

 

 

 

 

Day 2 • Monday, October 20 – City tour of Modern Berlin: Welcome to Berlin

10.00 AM: Depart for a full-day bus and walking tour of Modern Berlin, a city haunted by its past. See various city sites such as Check Point Charlie, the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War (1947–1991); the open-air Wall Gallery and Memorial, which, at over 1316 meters long, is the longest continuous section of the Berlin Wall still in existence. After lunch, head to the Brandenburg Gate. En route, see the main thoroughfare, Unter den Linden, a beautiful boulevard lined with Linden trees. See the sweeping views of the city of Berlin. Welcome Dinner: Nolle Restaurant  Overnight: Westin Hotel, Berlin

Day 3 • Tuesday, October 21 – Jewish Berlin

9.00 AM: Walk to nearby Bebelplatz to see the memorial to the Burning Books. This memorial is a spatial installation; a library with empty shelves commemorates the book burning by Nazi students in 1933.
10:00 AM: See the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
11.30 AM: Visit the Neue Synagogue. The Neue or Oranienburg Synagogue was built in the mid-19th century and served as the main place of worship for Berlin’s Jewish community. The building is renowned for its striking Moorish Revival architecture and its iconic golden dome, making it one of the most significant Jewish landmarks in Berlin.
Visit the nearby Rosenstrasse Memorial. See the Stolpersteine in this area – the square golden inlaid blocks which delineate the name, date of birth and death, as well as date and destination of deportation.

 

 

Day 4 • Wednesday, October 22 – German Nazification – Berlin 

8.50 AM: Arrive at the Bavaria Platz, see the memorial dedicated to the Jews who lived in this neighborhood, and learn about the process of the Nazification of German Society.
10.00 AM: Depart for Wannsee, a town situated on a serene Lake Wannsee. The Wannsee Villa is amongst beautiful houses and villas belonging to past and current wealthy residents.
10.30 AM: Morning guided visit at Wannsee Conference Villa, where in 1942, a meeting on the Final Solution was held.
2.00 PM: Depart for the memorial at Track 17 commemorating the deportation of German Jews during the Holocaust years.
7.15 PM: Einstein Restaurant on Unter den Linden.

 

Day 5 • Thursday, October 23 – Wroclaw

8.00 AM: Depart Berlin for Wroclaw by bus– about a 4-hr drive
12.30 PM: Arrive in Wroclaw, previously known as Breslau.
2.00 PM: Guided walking tour of the Main Square. Visit the restored Stork Synagogue and see an exhibition on the Jewish history of this area, and the mikveh.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 6 • Friday, October 24 – Jewish Krakow

7.00 AM: Bus departs for Krakow, an approximate 4-hour ride.
12.00 PM: Arrival at the Kazimierz, Jewish Quarter of Krakow.
1.30 PM: Meet up with the guide and scholar Shalmi Barmore and depart for Podgorze, the former ghetto where Krakow Jews were forced to live. See the Pharmacy from the outside and hear about the remarkable Polish pharmacist, Pankiewicz, the only Aryan in the ghetto who kept records of what was happening to the Jews there.  See the Empty Chair Memorial, a testament to the void that now exists in that area.
2.30 PM: Continue to the Plaszów Memorial site, the nearby forced Labor and Concentration Camp, which was built as the Kraków Ghetto was being eliminated. Due to difficult and cruel conditions, thousands of Jews died there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 7 • Saturday, October 25 – Old Town Krakow

9.00 AM: Shabbat synagogue service in Kazimierz in the Remuh Synagogue, which is Orthodox.
1.00 PM: History of the city on a walking tour of Krakow Old Town. View the Old Cloth Hall, considered to be one of the finest Renaissance buildings in Central Europe. At St. Mary’s Church, we learn that from its tower, a trumpeter appears every hour to play an interrupted bugle call to commemorate the “Trumpeter of Krakow,” whose warning of an invasion to the citizens of Krakow was silenced by an arrow through his throat.
2.00 PM: With our scholar, we continue our walk to Kazimierz, a suburb where Jews settled when they were expelled from Krakow in the early 15th Century. A myriad of buildings line the large square, including restaurants, hotels, stores, and synagogues. We will start our visit at the early 15th-Century Alt Synagogue (Old Synagogue), now converted into an extensive Jewish History Museum. Here we will hear the history of Kaziemierz and its Jews. We will walk around the area, see the Remuh Synagogue, and peek into the cemetery,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 8 • Sunday, October 26 – Auschwitz I and II

8.00 AM: Depart for the 1.5-hour drive to Auschwitz, the most notorious of the extermination camps, where we will spend the bulk of the day.
9.30 AM: Arrive at Auschwitz I and II for an expansive visit here. At Auschwitz I, it was here that one-and-a-half million people from all over Europe (90% Jews) perished before its liquidation at the end of 1944. The site of the camp houses the Auschwitz Museum that displays exhibits and documents concerning Nazi crimes. Block 27 is dedicated to the Jewish martyrs. This day entails a lot of walking and standing.
3.15 PM: Continue to the Auschwitz Jewish Center in Oswiecim to see the renovated synagogue and daven here.

 

 

 

 

 

Day 9 • Monday, October 27 – Heading to Warsaw via Kielce

8.30 AM: Depart by bus for Warsaw via Kielce, about two hours away. Kielce is infamous for the pogroms perpetrated on the Jews after the war. We will start our visit at the Jewish Cemetery, just outside Kielce. Afterwards, in Kielce, we will head to Planty 7, the site of the movie Bogdan’s Journey. Together with Andrej Bialek, we will visit the exhibition about the victims of the pogrom in the tenement house at Planty 7, the actual site of the 1946 pogrom and massacre.
1.45 PM: Continue with a tour of the center of Kielce. See the main synagogue and a few other landmarks important to the Jewish community.
3.00 PM: Depart for Warsaw, approximately two hours away.
5.00 PM: Arrive in Warsaw.

 

 

Day 10 • Tuesday, October 28 – Treblinka

8.00 AM: Tour of the Ghetto area including Sienna St, Chlodna St, Mila 18 Memorial – the site of the headquarters “bunker” of the Jewish Combat Organization, a Jewish resistance group in the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland during World War Two. See also the Umschlagplatz, the place from where Warsaw’s Ghetto Jews were deported to Treblinka, and the Ghetto Memorial.
11.00 AM: Depart for the infamous extermination camp of Treblinka, the final and fatal destination of Warsaw’s Jewry.
1.30 PM: Arrive to Treblinka. Start the visit at the newly-constructed Museum, where a movie explains what this grizzly place is all about. Walk about the site, paying respects to the various communities across Poland who were murdered here.
4.00 PM: Depart for Warsaw.

 

 

 

 

 

Day 11 • Wednesday, October 29 – Jewish Warsaw

8.45 AM: Depart for the Okopowa Jewish Cemetery, the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe and indeed, the world. This cemetery is huge and many of its tombstones are beautiful and unique. The “machers” of the Warsaw community are buried here, across all fields – cultural, educational, religious, academic, literary, etc.
11.15 AM: Continue to the Polin Museum, the Museum of Polish Jewish History which includes a wonderful exposition of prewar Jewish Life in Poland.
Visit the Rappaport Memorial outside the museum depicting two perspectives about Jews during the Holocaust.
3:15 PM: Return to hotel for free time – you can do some shopping in Old Town
5:00 PM: Depart for Ki Tov Synagogue for a meaningful ceremony to concluding our trip – a Torah handover to a nascent Warsaw Conservative Masorti community.
6.45 PM: Depart for the JCC where we will have our Farewell Dinner together with Rabbi Schudrich.

Taking a Torah to a New Home in Poland

So proud to have supported the donation of this torah to a synagogue in Poland in memory of my parents, Miriam and Sol Moskowitz, both Holocaust survivors. My mother was from Lodz and only 13 years old and my father from Bialystok and only 15 years old when taken from their homes to what would be the beginning of 6 years of endless torture, suffering and loss at several concentration and labor camps. My sister and I grew up with no grandparents, uncles, aunts or (first) cousins. So proud of our synagogue for initiating this Torah (re)Dedication committee and Stuart and I are honored to have been a part of this process. We must NEVER FORGET! – Arlene and Stuart Liebman