Combine our popular Holocaust: Poland and the Nazi Death Camps tour with Professor Tim Cole's Holocaust Landscapes tour.

Day 1 - Depart

We fly from London to Warsaw before checking-in to our central hotel for two nights. (D)

Day 2 - Warsaw

A busy day exploring the Polish capital on foot to explore the key sites associated with the former ghetto and its subsequent uprising: the Nozyk Synagogue (the only surviving pre-war Jewish house of prayer in Warsaw), the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, the Umschlagplatz (a holding area set up by Nazi Germany) and the Warsaw Jewish cemetery, one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in the world. (B,D)

Day 3 - Treblinka & Lublin

This morning we drive to the extermination camps at Treblinka, where between 700,000 to 900,000 Jews lost their lives. Operational between July 1943 and October 1943, more Jews lost their lives at Treblinka II than at any other death camp, other than Auschwitz. Spend time in the small but informative museum before visiting the memorials to those who lost their lives. We spend the night in Lublin, a city which had a large pre-war Jewish population and which served as the administration centre for Action Reinhardt.(B,D)

Day 4 - Belzec & Majdanek

Our day will begin at the concentration camp of Majdanek, just on the outskirts of Lublin, where approximately 80,000 people from 28 different countries lost their lives. Today it is a well-preserved Nazi concentration and death camp where we find barracks, guard towers, gas chambers, crematoria, museum, “Gates of Hell” memorial and the mausoleum memorial, a gigantic structure which contains the ashes of victims beneath it.
Continue to Belzec, the small but lethal death camp, where between 430,000 & 500,000 Jews lost their lives in six-months with as a few as 7 people surviving. Our hotel for the evening is based in Zamość, the historical centre of which was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1992.(B,D)

Day 5 - Krakow

This morning we drive to Krakow where we take a change of pace and emphasis with an afternoon orientation tour of Krakow's Old Town and its busy street life. Check-in to our hotel for three nights.(B,D)

Day 6 - Auschwitz and Birkenau

An early start as we are immersed in a comprehensive tour on foot of the concentration and death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. To enter the camp of Auschwitz, one passes under the infamous inscription 'Arbeit Macht Frei' mounted upon its main gate, before visiting the exhibitions in the surviving prison blocks.
In the afternoon we visit Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II, the purpose-built camp that had hundreds of barracks and 4 massive gas chambers and functioned as the epicentre of the Holocaust during 1943 and 1944. The day at Auschwitz and Birkenau explores two large camps and will involve a good amount of walking.
This evening you are free to find your own restaurant for dinner and perhaps explore Krakow.(B)

Day 7 - Kazimierz and Wieliczka

Before WW2, some 70,000 Jews lived in Krakow, mostly in the suburb of Kazimierz. We explore this tiny area including the Old Synagogue Museum and there will be an opportunity for an optional unaccompanied visit to the museum situated in the former Oscar Schindler's Factory. We visit the awesome 700-year-old salt mine at Wieliczka, its labyrinth of 300km of tunnels revealing chapels, underground lakes and a museum. (B,D)

Day 8 - Transfer to Prague

Return to Warsaw and fly to Prague where you check-in for three nights (B).

Day 9 - Prague

Morning at leisure in Prague. In the afternoon tour the fascinating Jewish Quarter including the Pinkas Synagogue a touching a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, The Old Jewish Cemetery and Jewish Museum. Hitler wished for the Jewish quarter in Prague to be preserved as a ’museum of an extinct race’. (B,D).

Day 10 – Theresienstadt and Ledice

This morning we drive out to the town of Terezin, or to give it its name of the time Theresienstadt. Used as a Labour Camp that was presented as a "model Jewish settlement" for propaganda purposes and even visited by the Red Cross, the reality was much bleaker. At the Lidice Memorial see where the Nazi regime wiped an entire village off the map, killing or imprisoning the population in the process. The massacre was carried out in response to the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.

Day 11 - Hartheim and Linz

Drive to the Hartheim Euthanasia Centre near Linz in Austria. The castle was one of the main centres for the Nazi’s euthanasia programme, or Action T4. This afternoon take a walking tour of Linz, which Hitler considered to be his home town and our base for the night.

Day 12 - Mathausen

Today we visit Mathausen Concentration Camp. The camp functioned from 1938 and was the last to be liberated by the allies. It was infamous for its ‘extermination through labour’ and acquired the nickname Knochenmühle, meaning the bone grinder or bone mill. Drive to Vienna and check in to our hotel for two nights.

Day 13 - Vienna

This morning we take a tour of the grand and beautiful imperial city of Vienna with special focus on its Jewish history including the Judenplatz memorial. The afternoon is your own to further explore the city, take part in some retail therapy or relax with a coffee and some patisserie. This evening we enjoy a special evening visit to the Freud Museum where the father of psychoanalysis lived and practiced before he was forced to flee to London.

Day 14 - Budapest

Journey by rail into Hungary and its capital Budapest. Despite there being a ghetto in Budapest, Hungary didn’t start deporting its Jews until 1944. Most of Hungary’s Jews were deported to Auschwitz over a short period in 1944, and it had the second highest number of Jewish deaths after Poland. Today we tour Budapest, visiting the site of the Pest Ghetto, the Dohany Synagogue (Europe’s Largest) and the Yellow Star Houses. The Yellow Star Houses were buildings that were designated as compulsory residences for the Jews of Budapest in 1944. Check-in to our hotel for the final night of the tour.

Day 15 – Budapest & Departure

Continue exploring Budapest’s holocaust story at the modern and interactive Holocaust Memorial Centre. At the International Ghetto we’ll learn about the heroics of Raoul Wallenberg and how he saved thousands of Jewish lives. We will also visit the small but poignant Shoes on the Danube Memorial, to honour the many Jews who were shot by the Arrow Cross into the river in 1944-45. Catch our evening flight back to London.

Why not extend your stay in Budapest ofr another night or two? Ask us for further details.