Planning a Holocaust Memorial Trip: What to See, How to Pace It, and What to Know Before You Go.
So you’ve decided to take a trip to Europe, but you don’t have cobblestone alleyways, scenic coastlines, or ancient architecture in mind. You’re planning a trip to pay respect to one of the most tragic events in European history: the Holocaust. And throughout much of Europe, there are plenty of memorials and remnants to visit—museums, plaques, gravesites, synagogue ruins, and even former concentration camps. But what most people miss is how to plan such a trip. What do you need to know to make your trip meaningful, not overwhelming, well coordinated, and ultimately accomplish what you set out to do?
The first thing to do is decide what kind of trip you’re taking. Are you planning to make a few Holocaust-related stops, or is the sole focus of your trip Holocaust history and memorial sites? Are you tracing your own family’s steps through the war, or are you taking a broader Jewish heritage trip that includes both Jewish life in Europe and the tragedy of the Holocaust? Knowing what you want to get out of the trip will make it much easier to plan—and much more likely that you’ll return home feeling that the trip accomplished what you came for.
One rule I’d follow when mapping out your travel time is not to turn your entire day into a miserable Holocaust-site marathon. It’s easy to fall into the trap of doing several things together just because it’s geographically convenient. Sure, let’s go to that museum next; it’s just a short walk from here. The problem with this type of planning is that it’s emotionally exhausting. You’ll stumble through because you’ve already committed to it, physically reading the artifact descriptions, plaques, and memorials, but not actually processing much of what you’re seeing because you’ve already spent your emotional capacity elsewhere. By the end of the day, you’ll return to your hotel feeling suffocated—which shouldn’t be the goal, even when visiting obviously difficult sites.
Instead, pick one major Holocaust site for the afternoon and give yourself the time to actually take it in. Read the stories, learn about the people who were there, stop when something catches your attention, and allow yourself to experience the place without watching the clock because you have three more memorials to get to. You’ll get far more out of one thoughtfully planned visit than you would by shoving five sites into the same day.
And once you step out, you can breathe. I’d suggest making your next activity something light and easy: visit a café, stroll through a beautiful neighborhood, sit in a park, or even go souvenir shopping. This isn’t disrespectful. It’s sensible planning that gives you space to absorb what you’ve just experienced without allowing the heaviest parts of the trip to consume the entire day.
The next thing to consider before setting out on your daily excursions is how much time each site actually deserves. Visiting a memorial or monument dedicated to the victims surely won’t require as much time as a visit to somewhere like Auschwitz-Birkenau. Group together shorter activities spread out over a day, and leave an entire chunk of time for an extensive museum or memorial-site visit on another. A major former concentration or death camp should generally be treated as the main activity of the day, even if you’re not literally going to be there from morning until night. Trying to squeeze a guided walking tour or cemetery visit into the same afternoon is likely to leave the entire day feeling rushed and overdone.
On the other hand, if you’ve got an extra hour during a calmer morning, try taking yourself on a history walk by following the Stolpersteine (“stumbling stones”) through the city and reading the stories—and fates—of the Jews who once inhabited the area. Smaller memorials like these can fit naturally into the rest of your itinerary without requiring you to build an entire day around them.
This will be the turning point of your trip: learn about the Jews who lived there. Yes, you’ve visited places of Jewish suffering, stood among the ashy remains of somewhere prayers were once held, and observed artifacts that bear witness to the tragedy. But that’s not all there is. For something of this magnitude to have happened to such a large population, there first had to be thriving communities—and that’s exactly what should be sought out when taking a Jewish heritage trip through Europe.
Take a stroll through the former Jewish quarter and imagine what those same streets might have looked like on a Friday evening as Shabbat began and families hurried home or made their way to prayers. Visit a synagogue and learn about it: When was it completed? Which community did it serve? What happened to its congregation, and how is the building used today? Where there is an active Jewish community, look for opportunities to learn about its culture and way of life and how Judaism continues there today. If available and appropriate for visitors, join a community Shabbat meal or prayer service and experience Jewish life in that place for yourself. A truly immersive Jewish heritage experience includes the before, during, and after—not just the Holocaust itself.
Before booking tickets, I’d strongly encourage doing some research on the sites you’ll be visiting. It can be incredibly disorienting to arrive somewhere completely unprepared for what you’re actually going to find. That being said, there’s no need to go crazy. Your intention isn’t to remove all spontaneity and mystery from your travels altogether. You still want to discover new things as you go along, learn something that surprises you, and experience these places for the first time when you step into them.
What you’re trying to avoid is arriving without any idea of what a place entails, or being disappointed when the reality doesn’t match what you expected to see. That old synagogue may now be a museum—the damaged paint has been restored and the interior reconstructed. The place where a camp once stood might now be an ordinary building with nothing but a plaque reminding passersby of what happened there. A building that once held a huge synagogue congregation might now be a store or a school. That unremarkable patch of grass might be where the bimah once stood. It’s worth knowing what is—and isn’t—still there before you arrive, so you can understand the significance of what you’re looking at even when there isn’t much left to see.
And as the trip comes to a close, I’ll leave you with one final tip: don’t end your Jewish heritage tour on a depressing note. The memory of your visit to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp or a survival story you heard will still be alive in your mind even if you didn’t go the morning before your return flight. In fact, if you’re immediately rushing off somewhere else, you’ll have almost no time to absorb it. Managing a bustling airport, trying to reach for your laptop and shoes in the security line while the musty scent of the execution room is still lingering in your nose is truly a disaster. It adds extra stress to your travels, leaves no room for reflection, and makes an incredibly heavy experience the final note of your entire trip.
You don’t want that to be what you close on. Give yourself something afterward: a final Shabbat, a beautiful neighborhood you haven’t explored yet, dinner somewhere you’ve been looking forward to, a visit to a living Jewish community, or simply one last peaceful day in the city. The Holocaust can be an important and meaningful part of your journey without being the note on which the journey ends. So do yourself a favor and lay out your itinerary in a way that’ll make you smile later, remembering the sweet, the bitter, and the unforgettable parts of your trip.
Now that you know how a meaningful European Jewish heritage trip comes together, go ahead and book those flights. Follow in the footsteps of your ancestors or the people whose stories you’ve heard, explore the Jewish communities that once existed and those that still thrive today, and make the journey meaningful in every way possible.
If you’d like to take a trip like this but don’t know where to begin, this is exactly what I help travelers plan at Roots & Routes Travel. Your itinerary is built around your trip goals, family history, personal needs, travel style, and the experiences that matter most to you—so you can focus on the journey rather than figuring out all the logistics yourself.
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