Polin Travel is a research center created out of a passion for guiding, history and genealogy. This is the first project in Central Europe combining those three fields in order to provide high quality, tailor-made travel and genealogy research services for visitors with different backgrounds and travel expectations. The firm was created in 2000 in Cracow and has been directed since then by Tomasz Cebulski, Ph.D.
We specialize in Jewish guiding and genealogy services in Poland but we also work in other fields like Christian genealogy in Poland and regular private, expert-guided tours to most popular travel destinations around Cracow and Central Europe. We have special academically designed travel itineraries to Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, Cracow, Kazimierz, Wieliczka Salt Mine and the majority of Jewish heritage and Holocaust-related sites in Poland. We guide our tours and lead genealogical research mainly in Poland and former Galicia territory (nowadays partly in Ukraine). Our guiding and genealogy research services also cover the territories of Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, Ukraine and other countries of Central Europe. We have a broad range of experts in tourism, research and education in Central Europe to be able to customize your tour and provide an unforgettable and enlightening travel opportunity.
Last years brought us a lot of experience with different projects starting with Jewish genealogical researches for individual families, through projects for families of Holocaust survivors, finishing on large, student field tours focusing on Holocaust and minorities heritage in Europe. Among our clients and partners, we have universities, museums, high schools or Jewish communities from the USA, Canada, Great Britain and Israel. All our tours and research projects are tailor-made and are privately guided because we believe in quality, not quantity. Quality, which was valued by many of our former guests who had decided to use our services: Oprah Winfrey, Elie Wiesel, Steven Pinker among the others.
RECOMMENDED PRIVATE TOURS AND STUDY TRIPS
Private, individually guided tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Cracow Ghetto, Schindler's Factory and Plaszow Camp.
Years of experience have thought us about different motivations of visitors coming to see Auschwitz-Birkenau. Noticing the serious drawbacks of growing mass touristic visits we decided to offer one-day private tours of Auschwitz, according to our academically developed and experience-based itinerary.
Private, individually guided tour of Cracow, Kazimierz, Cracow Ghetto and Schindler's Factory.
There is much about Cracow and Kazimierz which is conceived from the eyes of visitors in the city's history, legends and atmosphere. A good guide on a well-conducted tour can easily unveil this invisible dimension.
Private, individually guided tour of Polish Shtetls.
One day tour itinerary based on the splendid history of Jewish communities in Poland and Galicia. Villages and cities which before WW II were the very essence of Jewish life in Poland are now waiting to be re-discovered.
Private, individually guided tour of Lublin / Majdanek and Action Reinhard Death Camps of Treblinka, Bełzec and Sobibor.
The three death camps of Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor represent the ultimate evil of the German Nazis and the ultimate destruction of Polish Jewry. Those places are often scarcely known about because the Nazis did their best so that we would not remember them.
You can find more travel itineraries at TOURS, SITES, PAST PROJECTS or HOLOCAUST EDUCATION and JEWISH HERITAGE AND HOLOCAUST TRAVEL MAP OF POLAND.
NEWS FROM POLAND CRACOW AND GALICIA
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On 12 December 2025, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum opens the first part of its new main exhibition.
Dec 12, 2025 | 11:00 am
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The grounds of the former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau were transformed into a Museum just two years after liberation. In 1947, following a long and extremely turbulent debate about the future of this site, an unprecedented decision was made to preserve the remains of the camp and open them to visitors wishing to pay tribute to the victims. It was a decision unique in both Europe and the world. There had been no existing model for protecting[…] -
The Narrative of the New Polish Exhibition at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum
Sep 3, 2025 | 11:26 am
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Auschwitz as a Museum Museum exhibitions serve many purposes, but their foremost role is to communicate facts and convey the essence of the phenomena they present. Over the past twenty years, museum practice in Poland has increasingly embraced the genre of the “narrative museum,” in which historical content is presented through immersive, stage-like displays that envelop the visitor in the subject matter. Although Auschwitz was designated a museum as early as 1947, the term was employed primarily for practical[…] -
The Architecture of the New Polish Exhibition at Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum.
Sep 2, 2025 | 11:13 am
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Today marks the opening of a new national exhibition at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. The previous display, dedicated to the fate of Polish prisoners, had been presented from 1985 to 2023 under the title “The Struggle and Martyrdom of the Polish Nation in the Years 1939–1945.” Over the past two years, extensive conservation work has been carried out in Block 15 of the main Auschwitz camp. The newly unveiled exhibition is entitled “Poles in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Residents of[…] -
Milówka and Bielsko-Biała Goldberg family. First Jewish mountain shelter and Sukkah in Milówka.
Jun 24, 2025 | 16:15 pm
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The Goldbergs started in Oświęcim in the early XIX century to move to Milówka towards the end of the century and arround WW I expand into Bielsko-Biała. Sukkah it is. I am sure that Moses Goldberg from Oświęcim who built this house in Milówka and had a hardware store equipped it with a crank mechanism to lift the roof for Sukkot. He was welcoming his guest with the Aramaic/Yiddish - ushpizin welcome to invite the 7 supernal guests "founding[…] -
Moniek, Poldek, Eduard, and Adolf—later known as Dolek, and eventually Maurice—were the sons of Maksymilian and Eleonore Goldberger in Wadowice. Soccer with John Paul II.
Jun 24, 2025 | 16:01 pm
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The Ghost of Wadowice The Goldberger brothers once played soccer in the cobbled market square of Wadowice, their laughter mingling with the morning bustle. We know this not from myth, but from memory—Karol Wojtyła, later known to the world as Pope John Paul II, recalled Poldek Goldberger as one of his childhood companions on the field. Moniek, Poldek, Eduard, and Adolf—later known as Dolek, and eventually Maurice—were the sons of Maksymilian and Eleonore Goldberger. Their family home[…] -
3300 km. The longest deportation route from Tromso to Auschwitz – Birkenau.
Jan 15, 2025 | 19:09 pm
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Each January 27th marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945. Today we have the 79th anniversary and the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Auschwitz has redefined Europe and it sends globally a warning against populism, intolerance, ignorance and silence. Against the major factors dismantling the democratic order and replacing it with a crooked dictatorships in democratic disguise. No other German Nazi camp impacted Europe and its Jewish population the way Auschwitz did. Last week I was at the edges[…] -
Is the 80th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz about survivors or Netanyahu?
Jan 15, 2025 | 18:40 pm
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The theater of politics stages more and more often tragicomedies. Absurd ideas and ridiculous acts expressed with dramatic seriousness start to have tragic consequences for the polarized and less and less amused audience. If it were not for polarization and siding with one troupe, common sense would call the audience to leave en mass, abandoning the politicians to themselves. When the lights go off and X is silent, there should be space for reflection. But our tribalism,[…] -
From T4 through Action Reinhardt to Risiera di San Sabba
Aug 17, 2022 | 09:50 am
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RISIERA DI SAN SABBA 79 years ago the sites of mass murder within Action Reinhardt were gradually being closed and taken apart. Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka death camps finished what they were created for, the mass murder of Jewish communities. The German perpetrators in the late summer of 1943 were dismantling the primitive camp's structures to deny those ever existed and recoin this denial into silence and after-war impunity. In such circumstances, the revolts of Sondercommandos in Treblinka and[…] -
How to apologize without apologizing? Antisemitism in Russia and the number of Holocaust victims.
May 13, 2022 | 20:51 pm
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Can apology become hybrid warfare at the front of the politics of memory? Have 40 % of the USSR Jews become the victims of the Holocaust? President Putin apologized to PM Bennett in a way so that there is no trace of such an apology in the Kremlin or Russian news outlets. They mention the Israeli Independence Day phone call by Putin but as of May 6th deny any apology. The Russian FM Lavrov’s antisemitic remarks on May 1st were[…]
Get more ideas on what to do on the Krakow Travel Guide.