Road to the Holocaust

Tour Introduction

Whilst most of the victims of the Holocaust perished in Poland and further east, the conception and planning of the Final Solution took place in Berlin. This tour traces the process by which such an unimaginable crime became reality, from rooms where bureaucrats discussed mass murder in terms couched in euphemisms such as ‘resettlement’ and ‘special treatment’ to the railway stations where countless thousands were loaded onto cattle wagons. Considering the role played by the organisations behind the Holocaust – the Gestapo and the SS – at the site of their former headquarters, the tour will also visit areas where Berlin’s Jewish community had lived and worked long before the Nazis came to power.

From there we head east to Krakow, exploring the pre-war Jewish community before culminating in a full-day study visit to the most notorious site of all, the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz-Birkenau.