Trips to Poland and Auschwitz with Genealogy Tour

Traveling through Poland to explore family heritage often leads to places marked by both life and loss. For many descendants of Polish families, a visit to Auschwitz is not only a journey into national history but also an encounter with collective memory. Genealogy Tour organizes educational trips that combine archival research, local heritage exploration, and guided visits to Auschwitz-Birkenau — ensuring a historically accurate and deeply respectful experience.

Historical Context of Auschwitz and the Holocaust

Auschwitz-Birkenau, located near the town of Oświęcim in southern Poland, became the largest concentration and extermination camp established by Nazi Germany during World War II. Between 1940 and 1945, it functioned as a central point in the systematic genocide of Jews, Poles, Roma, and other persecuted groups.

The site consists of two main sections: Auschwitz I, the original concentration camp built within former Polish army barracks, and Auschwitz II–Birkenau, an extensive complex designed for mass extermination. Over 1.1 million people were murdered here, primarily Jews deported from across occupied Europe.

Today, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum preserves authentic structures and artifacts as evidence of the atrocities committed. Guided visits conducted by certified historians provide factual explanations, avoiding dramatization and emphasizing historical documentation based on eyewitness accounts, postwar trials, and preserved archives.

Understanding Auschwitz requires situating it within the broader history of occupation and the destruction of European Jewry. For many visitors of Polish descent, this visit also serves to acknowledge the intertwined fates of families who lived in or near these regions before the war.

Other Historical Sites and Family Regions in Southern Poland

Trips to Auschwitz often include surrounding areas that reflect Poland’s complex wartime history. Nearby Kraków, with its preserved Jewish quarter of Kazimierz, offers context for understanding prewar coexistence and cultural life. The Oskar Schindler’s Factory Museum presents personal accounts of rescue and survival.

Further east, Lublin and Majdanek reveal different aspects of occupation, forced labor, and postwar memory. Many travelers also visit ancestral towns in Silesia, Małopolska, or Galicia — regions that hold archives, cemeteries, and churches connected to their family roots.

Exploring these places before or after visiting Auschwitz allows for a more comprehensive understanding of both life before destruction and the long process of rebuilding memory afterward. It situates individual family stories within the broader European narrative of war and remembrance.

Commemoration and the Continuity of Memory

Every trip to Poland that includes Auschwitz is ultimately about remembrance — of both personal and collective pasts. Genealogy Tour’s itineraries encourage reflection through historical learning, not ritualized mourning. Participants often document their findings through photographs, interviews, or family journals that preserve insights for future generations.

The company’s approach rests on three principles: authenticity of sources, respect for victims, and continuity of memory. Each journey helps travelers understand that heritage does not end with archives; it continues in the responsibility to remember truthfully and to protect the historical record.

By integrating family history with Holocaust education, Genealogy Tour transforms travel into a form of cultural preservation — one that honors those who lived, suffered, and survived within the complex history of 20th-century Poland.

Sources:
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Yad Vashem – The World Holocaust Remembrance Center
Majdanek State Museum