3rd Day, July 3
KRAKOW – JEWISH CULTURAL FESTIVAL                                                 Back to Top

The bimah door in the Remuh Synagogue, Krakow.

Our walking tour this morning will cover the Jewish Quarter – three synagogues, the Jewish cemetery, and the Galicia Museum.

REMUH SYNAGOGUE AND CEMETERY – Built in 1558, the Remuh and its cemetery serves the orthodox Jewish community of Krakow.

OLD SYNAGOGUE – Poland’s oldest synagogue dating originally from the early 16th century, the building today serves as a museum of Jewish history.

TEMPEL SYNAGOGUE – Built in 1862, the interior is decorated with Moorish woodwork. The synagogue serves the reform Jewish community and is frequently the venue for concerts.

GALICIA MUSEUM – The Museum celebrates the Jewish culture of Polish Galicia (southern and southeastern Poland).

The permanent exhibit of photographs, “Traces of Memory,” offers a contemporary look at the Jewish past in Poland, showing relics of Jewish life and culture that can still be seen today. The Museum book shop is among the largest in Poland.

The balance of the day and this evening are free to attend one or more events of the Jewish Culture Festival.

The Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow has been for 20 years the largest Jewish festival in the world. The Festival offers more than 200 events – synagogue songs, Klezmer, Hasidic and classical music, lectures and workshops.

Matterhorn will have a hospitality desk at our hotel in Krakow to assist our tour members with reservations for Festival events.

Event schedules for the 2012 Festival will be available in March, 2012.

Dinner is at leisure to sample one of Krakow’s restaurants on your own

 

4th Day, July 4
KRAKOW – FORMER GHETTO 
 JEWISH CULTURE FESTIVAL                                                                                Back to Top

Poster for the Jewish Cultural Festival in Krakow.

Sign of the Oskar Schindler Factory, Krakow.

Whoever saves a single life
is as if he had saved an entire universe
                                                    Mishnah, Sanhedrin 4:5

RIGHTEOUS AMONG NATIONS
Oskar Schindler

This morning we will cross the Vistula River and visit the former Jewish ghetto of World War II.

In 1939 Krakow had a population of about 250,000, including 60,000 Jews. About 6-7,000 Jews survived the war and holocaust – about 1,100 of them thanks to Oskar Schindler.

We will see the places filmed by Steven Spielberg on location for “Schindler’s List”. We will visit the site of Oskar Schindler’s factory in Krakow.

Next, we will visit the museum of the former Eagle Pharmacy, owned by the only non-Jew permitted by the Nazis to be inside the ghetto. The pharmacy became a meeting place for ghetto Jews. The owner later wrote a book documenting Nazi crimes against Krakow Jews.

We will see a remnant of the original ghetto wall built by the Nazis.

This afternoon is at leisure to savor the Old World ambience of Krakow.

You may wish to visit the Royal Castle on Wawel Hill, dating back to the 12th century. The first settlement appeared on Wawel Hill some 5,000 years ago.

Attend one or more events of the Jewish Culture Festival.



Stroll along the Vistula River and among the narrow medieval streets of the Jewish Quarter and Old Town, reflecting upon the triumph and tragedy of this fascinating city of the Old Europe.

Dinner is at leisure to sample one of Krakow’s restaurants on your own.

5th Day, July 5
OSWIECIM, AUSCHWITZ – BIRKENAU                                                            Back to Top

We will have a full day excursion to Auschwitz – Birkenau. Before visiting the camp, we will visit the Jewish Museum and Education Center at Oswiecim (Polish name for Auschwitz.) Jews first came to Oswiecim in the 16th century. Today the Museum and Education Center are affiliated with the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.

Return to Krakow in the late afternoon.

This evening is free to attend one or more events of the Jewish Culture Festival.

Dinner is at leisure to sample one of Krakow’s restaurants on your own.

 

6th Day, July 6
KRAKOW – JEWISH CULTURE FESTIVAL
 THE SHTETL: VESTIGES OF THE LITTLE JEWISH TOWN                 Back to Top

Remember the days of old,
Consider the years of ages past.
                                                    Deuteronomy 32:7

Today we will visit the heartland of Yiddish culture – the shtetl.

For centuries, Poland was the focus of Jewish life in Europe. The bedrock of the flourishing Jewish culture was the shtetl—the small town with a large Jewish population in pre-Holocaust Central and Eastern Europe. Primarily, shtetls were in the area of the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire.

Shtetl culture is used as a metaphor for the traditional way of life of 19th-century Eastern European Jews. Shtetls are portrayed as pious communities following Orthodox Judaism, socially stable and unchanging despite outside influence or attacks.

Wooden synogogues were pervasive in Yiddishland. They were unique because, unlike all previous synagogues, they were not built in the architectural style of their region and era, but in a newly evolved and uniquely Jewish style. Wooden synagogues were unusual; they were large, identifiably Jewish buildings – not hidden in courtyards or behind walls, as found in cities such as Vienna and Berlin.

In 1882 Alexander III of Russia banned Jews from rural areas and towns of fewer than 10,000 people. In the 20th century revolutions, civil wars, industrialization, and the Holocaust destroyed traditional shtetl existence.

To this day, traces of Jewish presence can be found in the vicinity of Krakow. Our excursion will highlight little towns whose appearance has hardly changed—places where the synagogues, the cemeteries, and the characteristic old architecture still stand.

This evening we will have dinner with klezmer music in the Jewish Quarter of Krakow.

Klezmer began in medieval Europe as the music of the Eastern European Jews. By the 19th century, it had become a developed musical style, taking its inspiration not only from the synagogue, but also from the non-Jewish culture that surrounded it.

A typical market in a shtetl where Jews were the majority just before the First World War. Long black silhouettes, a statue, a few trees, a provincial square . . . a lost world.

 

Marc Chagall, The Fiddler, 1912–13.
Violinists featured prominently
at births, marriages, and
deaths in traditional Jewish communities, and so became
an embodiment of the cycle
of life. This is a fiddler on a
roof, a symbol of the unstable
position of Jews in society.
The title of the musical
“Fiddler on the Roof” was
inspired by this painting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7th Day, July 7
KRAKOW – WARSAW                                                                                                 Back to Top

This morning we will travel via non-stop train, first class, to Warsaw.

Upon arrival in Warsaw, we will be met and transferred to our hotel.

This afternoon our Warsaw guide will give us a panorama tour of the Polish Capital.

After an early dinner this evening, we will be treated to a concert of music by Chopin.

Chopin concert at Royal Lazienki Park.

8th Day, July 8
WARSAW                                                                                                                            Back to Top

In 1939 there were 375,000 Jews in Warsaw – about 30% of the city’s population. The Jewish population of Poland was about three million. But, Jews comprised 56% of physicians in Poland and 43% of teachers. During the first third of the 20th century, Poland was the spiritual center of Ashkenazi Jewry.

More than half of the Jews in the world today have roots in Poland.

Warsaw: The Old Town Market Square circa 1912.
The Old Town Market Square in 1945.
The Old Town Market Square in 1996.

Today we will visit, with a local guide, the sites of Jewish heritage in Warsaw.

NUZHIK SYNAGOGUE – The only remaining pre-Holocaust synagogue in Warsaw.

JEWISH HISTORICAL INSTITUTE – Covering ten centuries of Jewish history and culture in Poland, the Institute has a poignant exhibit of the Warsaw Ghetto.

UMSCHLAGPLATZ – The Nazi assembly point for Jews to be transported to Treblinka.

MILA 18 – Among the last of the bunkers overrun by the Nazis during the Ghetto uprising. The uprising, led by Mordechai Anielewicz, was depicted by author Leon Uris in his book Mila 18.

MONUMENT TO THE HEROES OF THE WARSAW GHETTO – Honors the Jewish resistance fighters. Nearby is the construction site of the future Jewish Museum to be completed in 2012.

JEWISH CEMETERY – Established in 1806, the cemetery holds more than 200,000 graves and is among the largest Jewish Cemeteries in Europe. The size, design and text on the gravestones give insight into the sociology of the Jews of Warsaw.

GHETTO WALL REMNANT – We will see a remnant of the original Ghetto wall.

MONUMENT OF THE WARSAW UPRISING – Honors the largest and longest (August 1 to October 2, 1944) civilian uprising against the Nazis during World War II.

Dinner is at leisure to sample one of Warsaw’s restaurants on your own.

 

9th Day, July 9
WARSAW                                                                                                                    Back to Top

This morning we will meet with a journalist from Madrasz, a Jewish monthly of current events, opinion, and essays, to learn about Jewish culture in Poland today, Jewish identity, and other topics of Jewish interest in today’s Poland.

More than 70% of American Jews trace their ancestry to the Jews of Poland.

Persons wishing to trace their Polish ancestry can visit the Jewish Genealogy and Family Heritage Center at the Jewish Historical Institute. The Center offers consultations, research, and guidance to those wanting to explore their family ancestry in Poland.

This afternoon is at leisure to browse and shop in the Old Town of Warsaw. The Historical Museum on the Market Square is well worth a visit.

Our farewell dinner with music will be at a popular restaurant in Warsaw.

 

10th Day, July 10
WARSAW – USA                                                                                                              Back to Top

This morning we will be transferred to Warsaw Airport to begin our return journey to the U.S. Arrive back in the U.S. in the afternoon.

Ashkenazi Defined
Ashkenazi Jews are those Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities of the Rhineland in the west of Germany. Ashkenaz is the medieval Hebrew name for the region which in modern times encompasses Germany and the German speaking borderland area. Thus, Ashkenazi (Ashkenazim, Hebrew plural) or Ashkenazi Jews are literally “German Jews.”

Many Ashkenazi Jews migrated, largely eastward, forming communities in non-German speaking areas, including Poland, Lithuania, Russia, and Eastern Europe between the 10th and 19th centuries. They took with them and diversified Yiddish, a Germanic Jewish language among Ashkenazi Jews.

Although in the 11th century Ashkenazi Jews comprised only about three percent of the world’s Jewish population, by 1931 they accounted for (at their peak) about 92% of world Jewry. Today, Ashkenazi Jews make up about 80% of Jews world wide. Most Jewish communities with extended histories in Europe are Ashkenazim, except those in the Mediterranean region.

The majority of the Jews who migrated from Europe to other continents in the past two centuries are Askenazim, particularly Eastern Ashkenazim. This is especially true in the United States, where six million of the seven million American Jews – the largest Jewish population in the world – are Ashkenazi. They represent the largest single concentration of Ashkenazim in the world.

In an ethnic context the definition of an Ashkenazi Jew broadened; such a Jew became one whose ancestry can be traced to the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe.

Historians’ Brief Biographical Sketches

Dr. Edyta Gawron – Dr. Gawron is Assistant Professor in the Department of Jewish Studies and Director of the Center of Jewish History and Culture at the Jagiellonian University of Krakow. She teaches the history of Polish Jews in the 20th century, the history of contemporary Israel and the Diaspora, as well as Holocaust Studies. She is a member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences – Committee on the History and Culture of the Jews. Dr. Gawron was a research fellow at Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research.

Dr. Michal Galas – Associate Professor at the Department of Jewish Studies at the Jagiellonian University of Krakow, Michal Galas teaches the history of Judaism, and the history of the Jews in Poland, Eastern Europe, and the United States. He is the author and editor of studies that have been published in Polish, English and German; he has received fellowships in Poland and other countries. Prof. Galas is co-editor of the recent volume of POLIN: A Journal of Polish-Jewish Studies.

Other historians may also participate.

Organizations are welcome to bring their own historian.

 

Prices
Prices Per Person, Double Occupancy
From the East	Boston, New York, Newark	$6295
From the Mid-Atlantic	Washington, Philadelphia	$6395
From Chicago and the Mid-West	Chicago, Detroit	$6445
From the Carolinas	Charlotte	$6445
From Atlanta	Atlanta	$6595
From Florida	Miami, Orlando	$6595
From Texas	Dallas/ Ft. Worth, Houston	$6595
From the West	Denver, Phoenix	$6645
From the Pacific Coast	Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland/Seattle	$6695
Inquire about prices from cities not listed above. Land Only Price: $4895 per person, double occupancy. Single Room Supplement $695. Triple Room Reduction $20 per person. Add $292 U.S. and foreign airport and security taxes

Hotels
Krakow	Sheraton
Warsaw	Sheraton

 

Dates 2012
Depart USA	Return
July 1	July 10