About this tour
What can the experience of one city teach us about the evolution and unfolding of the Holocaust? On this Study Tour, we explore Krakow and its surroundings to trace how an ancient centre of Jewish life became central to the Nazi campaign of persecution and extermination.
Beginning in the narrow streets of Kazimierz, once home to one of Europe’s most vibrant Jewish communities, we follow the story as it crosses the river to Podgórze, where the ghetto confined tens of thousands behind walls whose tombstone-shaped fragments can still be seen today. At Schindler’s Factory and the site of the former camp at Płaszów, we encounter stories of survival, moral choice, and the machinery of occupation.
The journey culminates at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the Holocaust reached its most systematic and devastating form, transforming ideology into industry and erasing whole communities in the process. Through these places, we ask core questions about how and why the Holocaust happened, and what people choose to remember and forget today.
Learning outcomes
- Examine how the Holocaust became possible by tracing the transformation of Krakow from a vibrant center of Jewish life to a site of persecution, deportation, and destruction
- Analyze first-hand the physical and moral landscape of the Holocaust through visits to ghettos, labor camps, and extermination sites, and reflect on how place shapes understanding
- Interpret Auschwitz-Birkenau as both a historical site and a symbol, evaluating how its representation, explanation, and remembrance continue to shape moral and historical awareness
- Integrate primary sources with physical evidence by situating survivor testimonies, documents, and artefacts within the geographical and historical contexts in which they originated
Possible activities
- Explore Krakow’s historic Old Town on a guided walking tour to understand the city’s layered past and its role during the German occupation
- Visit Kazimierz, the former Jewish Quarter, to discover the synagogues, cemeteries, and cultural landmarks that once formed one of Europe’s most vibrant Jewish communities
- Walk through Podgórze, the site of the wartime Jewish Ghetto, and learn how daily life changed under Nazi rule
- Visit Schindler’s Factory, which functioned as a subcamp of the Płaszów concentration camp, producing materials for the German war effort
- Go on a full-day visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, tracing the transformation from concentration camp to extermination center and considering how ideology became industry
- Visit the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow, which presents photographic and archival exhibitions on Jewish life in Galicia and the Holocaust, encouraging reflection on memory, identity, and survival