Flights and Prices

Those attending are being asked to book the 0610 Ryanair flight from Stansted to Kracow, Flight No FR2432 on Sunday 21^st February, arriving at 0935 and to return on Tuesday 23^rd February Flight No FR2437 leaving Kracow at 1525 landing 1655.

On 31^st October 2009, the total cost of the return flight with one piece of hand luggage and a checked bag of not more than 15kg using a credit card to book was £108.70.  This price varies depending on the date you book.

This price does not include insurance which you would need to take out separately. 

Additional to this, we are estimating the cost of the Mission to be not more than £350 per person but this will depend on the number travelling – ie it could be less.  

The total cost will thus be in the region of £450 per person.

There are a maximum 25 places on this Mission .

Itinerary 

Sunday 21st February 

Up at 3.30am to London Stansted.  Arrive at the airport by 5.00am, catch Ryanair flight to Krakow and met by guide, after we land around 9.35am.

We daven on the coach which takes us straight to Auschwitz-Birkenau, arriving at approximately 11.30am and we spend some 4½ hours there with our guide. 

We end the tour of Auschwitz around 4pm, with Minchah & a Kinnah (Lamentation) for the victims of the Shoah (Holocaust) as well as a memorial prayer for the Martyred by the gas chambers at Birkenau, and blowing of the shofar at the end of the railway track.

We then visit the new Museum and Holocaust Centre in the nearby town of Oswiecim (see their interesting web site at www.ajcf.org) with its reconstructed Synagogue.  We daven Maariv there.

We leave the Osweicim centre at approximately at 6.30pm to go to our hotel, the three star Eden in Kazimierz, the Jewish area of Kracow, for dinner at 8.30pm. (The hotel comes complete with its own Mikveh).

Then bed.

Monday 20th February

Up early and off to Shacharis at the Remuh shul at 6.45am, followed by breakfast at the Eden hotel.

At 9am the coach leaves for a full day shtetl tour of Galicia including the cemetery at Nowy Sancz and the ohel (tomb) of Rabbi Shlomo Halberstam.  We visit the famous Chasidic town of Bobov to visit a typical Polish wooden shul (now restored) and visit the town of Tarnov, its cemetery (where 25000 Jews were massacred) and the remaining Bimah of its great Synagogue.

After a toilet stop, we return to Krakow by 8.00pm for dinner at the Eden Hotel and a guest speaker from the Polish Jewish Community.

Then bed.

Tuesday 21st February

We daven Shacharis at the Remuh shul again at 7.00am, followed by breakfast.

The morning is then spent with a 2½ walking tour of the Jewish quarter in Kazimierz, including Szeroka Square. This tour takes in museums, shuls and cemeteries including the Remuh and Isaac Synagogues and the cemetery at the Remuh including the tomb of R Moshe Isserles.  

The Galicia museum, our last stop on the tour includes a presentation on how Jews lived in Krakow for over 700 years, and why Kracow was called the ‘Galician Jerusalem’.  En route to the airport we visit Podgorze, south of the Wistula river.  This was the wartime ghetto in which the Shindlers factory and the Plashov camp were.

After this, the coach leaves for the airport and the flight home.