I want to be careful with my words here, because this is not a trip. It is a journey of remembrance, and the difference matters from the first sentence. In twenty years of accompanying groups to these sites, I have learned that the language we use shapes how people arrive. So I will not write about highlights or attractions or things to see. I will write about places we go to remember, and about how to carry a community through them with the dignity the dead are owed.
What follows is a framework for a remembrance journey across Germany and Poland, the two countries where the machinery of the Shoah was planned and carried out. It is built for groups led by rabbis, pastors, and educators who understand that the purpose is memory, witness, and the obligation to never forget. This is the gravest of the journeys we accompany, and it is held apart from our other Germany heritage routes for that reason. We do not combine it with sightseeing.
Every transfer includes hotel pickup and dropoff, and we keep the pacing slow on purpose. A remembrance journey is not measured in sites covered. It is measured in the space we leave for grief, for silence, and for the leader to do the work only a leader can do.
Before You Go: Preparing a Community for Remembrance
The most important part of this journey happens before the group leaves home. I ask every leader to prepare their community in advance, because the sites we will stand in deserve people who arrive already in a posture of reverence.
Talk with your group about what they will encounter. Read names. If your community has survivors or descendants of survivors, give them a place in the preparation. Decide together how you will mark Kaddish or hold a memorial service, and where. The journey itself is not the time to figure out how to grieve. It is the time to grieve, having decided in advance how.
We will help you build this preparation into the planning, and we will arrange for the readings, the candles, and the quiet spaces the journey will need.
Days 1 and 2: Berlin, Where the Plan Was Made
We begin in Berlin, where the destruction was conceived as policy. This is not a sightseeing chapter. We go to understand how a state organized the murder of a people, because remembrance without that understanding is incomplete.
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the field of concrete pillars near the Brandenburg Gate, has no prescribed path through it, and the Information Center below holds the names and the family stories. We go to the House of the Wannsee Conference, the lakeside villa where the plan for the murder of European Jewry was coordinated in January 1942. The calm bureaucratic horror of that room is something a community should witness together. The Topography of Terror, on the former Gestapo headquarters, sets out plainly how the apparatus of terror was built.
I keep the evenings unscheduled. After Wannsee, a group needs to be together quietly, and the leader needs room to gather them.
Day 3: Sachsenhausen, and the Move Toward Poland
We go to the Sachsenhausen Memorial north of Berlin, one of the first concentration camps, opened in 1936 and used as a model and training ground for the wider camp system. We walk it slowly. The roll-call ground, the remaining barracks, and the memorials there ask for time and silence, not narration.
In the afternoon we begin the passage toward Poland. I treat this transition with care, because we are following, in reverse, a route along which people were deported. Naming that honestly, rather than letting it pass as ordinary travel, is part of the work.
Days 4 and 5: Krakow and the Jewish World That Was
In Poland we base in Krakow, and here the journey insists on something vital: before the destruction, there was a world. Krakow’s Kazimierz district was the heart of one of the great centers of Jewish life in Europe for five centuries. We walk it not as nostalgia but as witness to what was lost.
We visit the Remuh Synagogue and its old cemetery, among the most significant in Poland, and the Galicia Jewish Museum, which holds the memory of Jewish life across the region. We go to the area of the former Krakow Ghetto and to the Ghetto Heroes Square with its memorial of empty chairs.
I insist on these days because remembrance that begins and ends at the camps risks reducing six million people to the manner of their deaths. They had homes, prayers, learning, and music. Standing in Kazimierz, a community remembers the life, which is the only way to grasp the scale of the loss.
Day 6: Auschwitz-Birkenau
There is no language adequate to this day, and I will not pretend otherwise. We go to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum, the largest of the killing centers, where more than a million people, the overwhelming majority of them Jews, were murdered.
We move through it slowly and in silence, with a memorial educator. This is a place of mourning and of binding obligation, never a place of spectacle. We do not rush, and we do not fill the silence with words that are not needed. Many groups choose to recite Kaddish or El Maleh Rachamim at Birkenau, near the ruins of the crematoria. We arrange for that to happen with the dignity it requires, and we make sure your community has decided in advance how they wish to mark it.
I schedule nothing else on this day. After Auschwitz-Birkenau, a community needs the rest of the day and the evening to be together, quietly, in whatever way the leader has prepared. The role of the rabbi, pastor, or educator on this day is the most important role on the entire journey.
Day 7: A Day of Reflection and Return
The final day is given entirely to reflection. We do not stack another site onto the end of a journey like this. Instead we make space for the community to gather, to speak if they wish, and to begin carrying home what they have witnessed.
Some groups hold a closing service. Some plant the seed of a commitment, a teaching, a remembrance project to bring back to their congregation. Some simply sit together. Whatever form it takes, the closing belongs to the leader and the community, and we make sure they have the quiet and the space to hold it.
We then arrange the transfer for departing flights, with no rush. The journey ends gently, because the people carrying it home need it to.
A Note on Language and Intention
I want to say this plainly, because it shapes everything about how we accompany these journeys. We do not use the vocabulary of tourism for the sites of the Shoah. There are no highlights here. There is no “best of.” There are places where people were murdered, and our task is to stand in them with reverence, to remember, and to carry the obligation of memory forward.
If that is the journey your community is called to make, we will accompany you with the care it demands.
FAQ: A Germany and Poland Remembrance Journey
Who should lead a remembrance journey of this kind?
A rabbi, pastor, or educator who is prepared to hold a community through profound grief. This is the journey where spiritual leadership matters most. We support the leader fully, but the closing prayers, the moments of silence, and the pastoral presence at sites like Auschwitz-Birkenau belong to the one who knows the community. We ask leaders to prepare their people in advance so everyone arrives ready.
How is this different from a heritage tour of Germany?
It is different in purpose and in tone. A heritage tour holds the full arc of a people’s history, including its flourishing. A remembrance journey is given specifically to the memory of the Shoah, conducted with the gravity that demands. We hold it apart from our other Germany itineraries and never combine it with general sightseeing. The intention is witness and memory, not travel.
Why include both the sites of life and the sites of death?
Because remembrance that visits only the camps risks reducing millions of people to the way they died. Beginning in the Jewish quarter of Krakow, where a great civilization lived for five centuries, lets a community remember the world that was destroyed. Holding the life and the loss together is the only way to grasp the true scale of what was taken.
How do you handle the visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau?
With the utmost care. We go with a memorial educator, move slowly and in silence, and schedule nothing else that day. We help your community decide in advance how it wishes to mark the visit, whether through Kaddish, El Maleh Rachamim, or another form of remembrance, and we arrange for that to happen with dignity. The rest of the day is left open for the community to be together.
Should children or young people take part?
That is a decision for the leader and the families, and it depends on the maturity and preparation of the young people involved. For groups that include teenagers, especially educational groups, we work closely with the leader on preparation and pacing so the experience serves memory rather than overwhelms. We are glad to talk this through with you in detail.
If your community feels called to make a journey of remembrance through the sites of the Shoah, we will accompany you with the seriousness it requires. This is sacred and difficult work, and it deserves a planning conversation that honors its weight from the very first call. Group leaders travel free with fifteen or more participants, so that the obligation of memory is never out of reach for a community that wishes to fulfill it.
When you are ready to begin that conversation, contact us, and we will hold it with the care it demands.