Arrival - Tuesday Evening January 9th Warsaw Arrive in Warsaw and get to the Novotel Warsaw Centrum Check-in to the hotel and rendezvous for dinner and initial orientation meeting.
Day 1 - Wednesday January 10th Warsaw Tiktin Travel to the shtetl of Tiktin Wake up early for davening and breakfast and travel to the north. See the famed shtetl of Tiktin (Tykocin), first settled by Jews in 1522, almost exactly as it has been throughout hundreds of years of Jewish history. Daven Mincha in the beautiful shul (pictured), restructured in 1642 to replace the wooden one in which the Maharsha served as Rav, whose following Rabbonim include the Baalei Maginei Shlomo, Eliyahu Rabbah, and Maaseh Rokeach. Visit the town square where the Jewish and Christian sections met and the Jewish businesses thrived, the Naruw River where they did their laundry and their tashlich for generations, and the cheder building where thousands of talmidim learned over the centuries. See the now desecrated cemetery which was operating from the 1520s-1940s. Kever Achim in the Lopochower Forest *Not for Kohanim Come face to face with the end of thousands of similar shtetlach throughout Eastern Europe as we travel deep into a nearby forest to a mass grave of Holocaust victims. Be mechabed the close to 2000 Kedoshim of the shtetl of Tiktin who were killed over the course of two days in late August 1941 as we say tefillos and divrei chizuk by the side of three mass graves of men, women and children.
Day 1 - Wednesday January 10th Treblinka Lublin Visit the Memorial Site of the Treblinka Death Camp *Parts are not for Kohanim Not far from the region of Tiktin is the infamous site of the Treblinka Death Camp, final resting place of close to 800,000 Kedoshim, including the vast majority of the prisoners of the Warsaw Ghetto. We will say divrei chizuk and say tefillos at the memorial site that commemorates those who were killed in the gas chambers as well as the destruction of 17,000 individual cities, towns and shtetlach throughout Nazi occupied Europe, each represented by a stone in the memorial field. Travel to Lublin Visit Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin Introduction to the Lublin Region Jewish Communities inside the historic Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin the jewel of Lublin s Jewish Community, most important institution in Poland and the center of Europe s Yeshiva world. Learn all about Rabbi Meir Shapiro (dynamic leader of Torah Jewry in Poland and member of Polish parliament) who not only founded a revolutionary yeshiva system but is the father of Daf Yomi, the Shas educational revolution that continues to shape the Jewish world today. The Old Lublin Jewish Cemetery *Not for Kohanim Following Shacharis and breakfast we will visit the ancient Lublin Jewish Cemetery and stand by the kever of the start of all Torah Jewry in Poland, Rav Yaakov Pollack, who in the earliest years of the 1500s brought the Torah of Pilpul to Poland and Rav Shalom Shachna, famed posek and father-in-law of the Rema. Daven by the Kevarim of the Maharshal and Chozeh MLublin, a place that people have traveled to for generations to daven for yeshuos. Sleep in Lublin
Day 2 - Thursday January 11th Lublin Majdanek Walking Tour of the Old Jewish Quarter of Lublin Walk the streets and alleyways that the thriving Jewish Kehillah of Lublin walked for hundreds of years. See the area where great scions of Torah, as well as major promoters of the haskalah lived side by side in the area that was for a time the seat of the Vaad HaArbah Aratzos. Visit the area that eventually became the Jewish Ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Poland as well as the Royal Castle of Lublin, a place that for hundreds of years offered the Jewish community safety and security in its shadow (where the shul of the Maharshal once stood), and that ultimately became a place of unspeakable suffering when it was used as a Gestapo headquarters and prison during the Holocaust. Majdanek Concentration Camp Established on the outskirts of Lublin and used for labor and extermination of prisoners, and captured nearly intact by the Soviet Red Army it remains until today the best preserved display of Nazi oppression and cruelty. Stand at the camp selection site right outside the still intact gas chambers before walking the length of the camp and seeing the furnace and crematorium building, and the site of a mass execution on November 3, 1943, when 18,400 Jews were killed on a single day, in response to the mass escape from the Sobibor Death Camp less than one month earlier.
Day 2 - Thursday January 11th Lizhensk Lancut Rzezsow Travel to Lizhensk Kever of the Noam Elimelech of Lizhensk Every year tens of thousands of Chassidim and Bnei Torah flock to the kever of the Rebbe Reb Meilich, the Noam Elimelech of Lizhensk. Have the zechus to daven at the kever of this great tsaddik and Rebbe that Klal Yisroel has gone to for tefillos and yeshuos for over 200 years. The Village of Lancut Walk the streets of the town where the Chozeh of Lublin used to be the Rav. Daven in the beautifully restored shul, left standing through WWII. The shul sits in the shadow of the magnificent Patazcki Palace, the birth place and childhood home of the famed disciple of the Vilna Gaon, the Ger Tzedek Avraham Ben Avraham, who grew up in Lancut as Count Valentino Patazcki. Sleep in Rzezsow
Day 3 - Erev Shabbos January 12th Tarnow Krakow Tarnow See the once thriving Jewish town of Tarnow, devestated by the Nazis between the years 1941 and 1943. We will visit the powerful and moving Kever Achim where the first deportations of Jews were taken and murdered in the woods of Zbylitowska Góra a few kilometers away. Travel to Krakow Old Krakow Part 1 Rema Shul and Beis HaChaim *Not for Kohanim Visit the Rema shul for Shacharis and visit the incredible Beis HaChaim right outside that was established by the Rema himself, davening at the kevarim of a long list of the leaders of Klal Yisroel throughout the generations in Poland including the Rema, his father and family, the Bach, Megale Amukos, Rebbe Reb Hershel and Tosfos Yom Tov. Hear how all of these Torah giants impacted Klal Yisroel and affected Torah learning and teaching until today.
Day 3 - Leil Shabbos January 12th Krakow Shabbos in Krakow We will be spending Shabbos in the beautiful Galaxy Hotel in Krakow, adjacent to the centuries-old Jewish neighborhood known as Kazimierz. Old Krakow Part II Shabbos Night Walking Tour of Old Krakow Following the Seudas Shabbos, we will go on a walking tour of the Kazimierz area. We will walk the same streets that the Rema, Megaleh Amukos, Bach and Tosfos Yom Tov walked on Leil Shabbos. See the many historical shuls and other remnants of Krakow s once thriving Jewish population, as well as the Jew-ish cultural revival in the area.
Day 4 - Shabbos January 13th Krakow Old Krakow Part II Daven Shacharis with a minyan in one of the beautiful, restored shuls in the Old Jewish Quarter of Krakow. After a seudas Shabbos we will have the opportunity to continue to see community that Gedolei Yisroel lived in over the course of centuries, including the famed Isaac Shul.
Day 4 - Motzei Shabbos Jan. 13th Krakow The First Beis Yaakov School On Motzei Shabbos, we will walk to 10 Stanislav Street, the beautiful building overlooking the banks of the Vistula River where Sarah Schenirer established the first formal institution for Jewish women in 1917. Kever of Sarah Schenirer and site of Plaszow Concentration Camp *Not for Kohanim. In one of the many contrasts of Kedusha and horror that remain in Poland, the site of the cemetery where Sarah Schenirer was buried in 1935 was ploughed over and became the site for the horrific Plazow Concentration and Labor camp, a place where thousands and thousands of Jews gave their life al Kiddush Hashem being worked and starved to death, beaten and shot by the commandant and guards. Now nothing of the camp remains, but in 2005 students of Sarah Schenirer restored her matzeivah at its original location.
Day 5 - Sunday January 14th Krakow Auschwitz See Schindler's Factory In another contrast of good and evil in the same place, we will see the factory of Oscar Schindler, a Nazi Party member and war profiteer who somehow turned himself into the savior of nearly a thousand Jews through the War. His factory, now a museum still standing in the original location, was a place that many Jews saw as their haven from the destruction of the Nazis. Auschwitz-Birkenau Auschwitz the largest of Nazi Germany's concentration camps and extermination camps, operational during World War II. Now, the Auschwitz camp is the most visited museum on the planet with a clear history and description of the destruction of European Jewry. We will visit the still standing Birkenau sub-camp, the killing factory of over a million Jews and a place of tremendous power and Kedusha with all the acts of mesirus nefesh and Kiddush Hashem that took place there. Travel to Lodz
Day 5 - Sunday January 14th Lodz Radegast Train Station in Lodz Visit the somber memorial and preserved cattle car at the infamous Radegast Train Station from or through which an estimated 200,000 traveled to their deaths at Chelmno and Auschwitz Lodz Jewish Cemetery The famed Jewish Cemetery at Bracka Street in Lodz was established in 1892. About 160,000 Jewish residents of Lodz and the neighboring areas people are buried there. Sleep in Lodz
Day 6 - Monday January 15th Lodz Warsaw Warsaw Jewish Cemetery *Not for Kohanim A retrospective of over 600 years of Polish Jewry by the Okopova Jewish Cemetery with well over 200,000 graves, this is one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in the world and gives a fascinating view of the massively influential and wide ranging nature of Poland s and especially Warsaw s Jewish community. Kevarim of the Chemdas Shlomo, Netziv and Reb Chaim Brisker as well as mass graves from the Ghetto. Warsaw Ghetto Tour Walk the streets that were once in the area of the Warsaw Ghetto, including the remains of the ghetto walls, the Umshlagplatz (deportation site) monument, Mila 18 and the Rappaport memorial, this tour gives life to the horrors of the largest WWII ghetto and the triumph of the acts of spiritual resistance by the Jews in the Ghetto as well as the famous Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Late Lunch and Tour Wrap-up We will finish the tour with dinner in Warsaw and a wrap up discussion. Participants should look for nights out of Chopin International Airport in Warsaw for Monday evening, Jan 15.