Type: Jewish History, Memorials, Nozyk Synagogue
Length: 3 Hours
Walking: Medium
Mobility: Folding Wheelchairs OK (some sites may be inaccessible, advance notice required)
Guide: Licensed Guide
Language: English

Warsaw, Poland - This tour focuses on sites related to the more than 380,000 Jews who lived in Warsaw leading up to WWII, making it the most important Jewish center in Europe. You visit the Nozyk Synagogue, the former Ghetto area, the Monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes and the Jewish Cemetery.

After meeting your guide you begin your tour with a visit to the Nozyk Synagogue, the only synagogue to have survived the war. The original building dates to 1902 but it was badly damaged in from air raids in 1939. It is located in what was the Small Ghetto and therefore was further damaged during the Warsaw Uprising. After the war, the property was returned to the Warsaw Jewish Commune but the renovations seen today did not begin until 1977.

Next you visit the former Ghetto area which only makes about 2.5% of the city, even though the Jewish population at the start of the war was about 40% of the total population. Your guide will show you some remains of the original Ghetto walls and the place of the wooden bridge that connected the so-called Small and Large Ghettos.

Then you visit the Umschlagplatz Memorial which sits at the location where some 300,000 Jews gathered for the deportation trains to the Treblinka extermination camp. The memorial contains 400 of the most common Jewish-Polish first names. Nearby is the Monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes which was unveiled in 1948, only five years after the Jewish Uprising took place on the streets in this vicinity.

Finally you visit the Jewish Cemetery which was established in 1799 and contains the graves of about 250,000 people. Of those, about 100,000 dies in from hunger or disease in the Ghetto.

At the end of the tour, you will be brought back to your hotel.