POLAND TRIP OCTOBER 28TH – NOVEMBER 2ND
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 28TH
- Ben-Gurion Airport 3AM
- Take off to Warsaw – EL AL # 563
- Landing in Warsaw – 915AM
- Umshlagplatz – deportation center of Warsaw Jews to Treblinka from July 1942
- The Route of the Heroes and Martyrs – tracing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (incl. Mila 18)
- The Ghetto Wall
- Lunch in Warsaw
- Bus to Treblinka Extermination Camp
- Opening Session, Dinner, Overnight in Lublin
THURSDAY OCTOBER 29TH
- Breakfast & Luggage on to the Bus
- Maidanek Concentration/Extermination Camp
- Short Ceremony
- Visit to the city of Lizansk and the revered Chasidic master Reb Elimelekh for a Tish
- Visit to Restored Lancut Synagogue & Markowa Memorial Site
- Surprise Stop
- Dinner, Overnight in Tarnow
FRIDAY OCTOBER 30TH
- Breakfast & Luggage on to the Bus
- Tarnow Ghetto
- Tour of the Krakow Ghetto, Apteka, Ghetto Wall, Schindlers Factory
- Plaszow Labor Camp
- Preparation for Shabbat
- Spirited Friday Night Prayers & Shabbat Dinner/Oneg
- Overnight in Krakow
SHABBAT OCTOBER 31ST
- Optional Morning Prayers at the Kupa Synagogue
- Kiddush
- Tour of Kazmierz – the Jewish Quarter
- Lunch
- Explore the beautiful Wawel Castle and its surrounding area
- Havdala
- Meeting with a Righteous Gentile among the Nations
- Dinner & Preparation for Auschwitz
- Overnight in Krakow
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 1ST
- Breakfast & Luggage onto the bus
- Tour of Auschwitz I and Museum
- Lunch
- Tour of Birkenau (Auschwitz II)
- Bus to Warsaw
- Dinner and Closing Session
- Overnight in Warsaw
MONDAY NOVEMBER 2ND
- Breakfast & Luggage on to the Bus
- El Al Flight #564 leaving Warsaw 1025am, arrive Tel Aviv 320pm
Read what students have written about this amazing trip!
The trips to graveyards, concentration camps, ghettos and memorials were hard, to say the least. I did quickly realize that the reason we keep milking Holocaust lessons is to make sure it doesn’t happen again, not for sympathy, which is what I originally believed.
…I walked out of a gas chamber with the rest of my group and sat on some grass that probably wasn’t there in 1941. I tried to pay attention to the voice of my tour guide, but my mind was numb. My gaze shifted from the door of the gas chamber to the field beyond the fence of the camp. Not even 100 yards away from the gas chamber was a house. I watched as a man walked out of the door and swung a small boy up on top of his shoulders. The man walked over to a jungle gym and continued to play with his young son. I watched as this child grew up and made his memories next to a death factory.
I don’t really think of my Poland trip as “good”.
Rather: Life changing, eye opening, and something that everyone (Jewish or not) needs to do.
But when I returned home from Poland, I felt a sense of pride that I hadn’t felt before.
When I see an Israeli flag now that I have returned from Poland, I see the six million in the six points of the Jewish star. And I smile with pride. Because we are still living and they did not succeed at ridding of us in this world. The importance of Israel has never been more clear to me than it is now.
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Trip Participants
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George Deek is an Arab-Israeli diplomat. In 2018, Deek was appointed Israeli ambassador to Azerbaijan. He is the first Israeli Arab Christian to become an ambassador. Deek grew up in an Eastern Orthodox Christian family in the Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa, in a building where the other tenants included Muslims, Catholics, Jews and a Catholic priest of Jewish ancestry.[2][3] His father, who worked as a tax advisor,[3] was one of the leaders of the Christian community in Jaffa who served as chairman of the Orthodox Association, and was considered a well-known and popular figure in the city until in 2015 a square was inaugurated in his memory in Jaffa in the presence of Mayor Ron Huldai.[4] According to Deek, his grandparents fled to Lebanon for safety when the 1947–1949 Palestine war, having been told that the Jews would slaughter them if they remained in their homes, but expecting to return home once Arab armies defeated the Jews.[3] According to Deek, when the war ended, his grandparents felt that they had been “deceived”, and decided to return illegally to their home in Jaffa rather than remaining in Lebanon as refugees. Since reentering the country was illegal, Deek’s grandfather, an electrician, was arrested and jailed.
