FACT-FINDING TOURS
 

NCLCI believes that its tours to Israel are unique. By traveling with NCLCI one has an opportunity to be updated on the complex and currently unfolding situation.
 

A fact-finding trip with NCLCI offers participants an opportunity to meet with members of the Knesset and other top Israeli officials as well as a cross-section of leading members of the Jewish and Palestinian communities.

 

Participants have also met with such church dignitaries as the Papal Nuncio, the Latin and Greek Orthodox Patriarchs, the Coptic Archbishop, and other important Protestant, ecumenical and interfaith leaders in Israel.

A Unique Opportunity
for Christian Leaders & Students to Visit Poland

Due to COVID, this tour has been postponed until August 2021

 

Learn About the History and Consequences of Antisemitism through an In-depth Experience of Jewish History and the Holocaust

 

Hosted by JoAnn Magnuson, Holocaust Educator & Veteran Tour Host

&

Dr. Tricia Miller, CAMERA Christian Research Analyst and
Author of Jews and Anti-Judaism in Esther and the Church

 

Cost: $2500 Land-Only; Airfare approximately $1500 from MSP

Includes all hotels, breakfasts and dinners, ground transportation, admissions and guides

 

CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, is the oldest and largest media watch group setting the record straight on Israel and the Middle East since 1982. CAMERA’s Partnership of Christians and Jews provides a powerful response to anti-Christian and anti-Jewish voices in the global media.

 

JoAnn Magnuson and Tricia Miller are leaders in the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel
and are trained educators with extensive experience in Holocaust education, opposing antisemitism,

and telling the truth about Israel.

 

This trip to Poland will:

• Educate Christian leaders about the history and consequences of antisemitism

• Equip tour participants to counter lies about Israel and the Jewish people with the truth

• Demonstrate the need for the existence of the Jewish State

• Strengthen participants through fellowship with like-minded believers in Eastern Europe
  who have a very different life experience than those of us from the USA

 

In brief, tour participants will:

• Learn about 1,000 years of Jewish life in Poland before World War II

• Encounter first-hand how the Nazis systematically destroyed that life

• Be strengthened and encouraged by meeting eastern European Christians in Oswiecim,
  the site of the Nazi extermination camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau
   

 

ITINERARY IN BRIEF

Warsaw for 4 nights – Welcome Dinner and Orientation, Jewish Historical Sites, 2 Nazi Death Camps

Oswiecim for 3 nights – Guided tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau and other local significant sites

Krakow for 4 nights – Oskar Schindler’s Factory, Jewish Historical Sites, Wieliczka Salt Mine

 

For More Information and to Register, Contact:

JoAnn Magnuson, 952-994-7545, jgmagnuson@mac.com or

Tricia Miller, 310-525-8644, friendofisrael@hotmail.com

 

Registration must be secured by a deposit of $200 in the form of a check mailed to:

NCLCI, PO Box 24307, Minneapolis, MN 55424
 

Full payment for the land-only cost of $2500 will be due June 1, 2020

 

ITINERARY IN DETAIL

 

Since participants will be coming from different cities, and some may want to arrive sooner and/or stay later than the duration of the tour, participants are encouraged to book their own flights to arrive in Warsaw no later than the afternoon of Sunday, 8/2, and to leave Krakow no sooner than the morning of Thursday, 8/13. If you want to fly from Minneapolis, you can join a group led by JoAnn Magnuson, departing on Saturday, 8/1.

 

 

8/2, Sunday

Arrive in Warsaw, Poland’s capital

Welcome dinner and orientation meeting

 

8/3-8/5, Monday - Wednesday

Tour Warsaw, home to one of the largest Jewish populations before WWII

Highlights include:

 -    Museum of the History of Polish Jews

• Nożyk Synagogue – the only synagogue that survived the war

• Historical reconstructed Old Town of Warsaw

• Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery – one of the largest, still operating Jewish necropolises in Europe and testimony to hundreds of years of Jewish life

• The remains of the Jewish ghetto – the largest in Europe, created by the Nazis, and site of two uprisings on the part of its inhabitants

• Mila 18 – the site where Jewish fighters held out to the end of the Ghetto uprising

• Monument to the heroes of the Ghetto uprising

• Umschlagplatz – the collection point where Jews were deported from the Ghetto to extermination camps

 

While staying in Warsaw, we will tour Treblinka, a nearby Nazi extermination camp where more Jews were murdered than at any other camp except Auschwitz. It is estimated that between 700,000 and 900,000 Jews were killed in its gas chambers.

 

8/6, Thursday

We will leave Warsaw for Oswiecim. En route, we will visit Majdanek, a graphic example of a Nazi extermination camp due to its largely intact gas chambers and crematoria.

 

We will arrive in Oswiecim Thursday night.

 

 

 

8/7-8/9, Friday – Sunday

Visit Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest and deadliest Nazi extermination camp

 -    Tour the original barracks and administration         buildings

• See the prisoners’ personal belongings

• View the gas chambers and crematoria

• Walk the train tracks that brought prisoners to the camps

• Experience the sheer vastness of the well-planned and thoroughly executed attempt to annihilate the Jewish people

 

Visit a local Monastery, where Franciscan monks have preserved the drawings of Marian Kolodziej, a survivor of four concentration camps, including Auschwitz

 

Have a guided tour of the extremely moving Fountain of Tears Memorial to the Holocaust, designed by Israeli Christian artist, Rick Wienecke

 

Fellowship with local Christians in Oswiecim

 

8/10 – 8/12, Monday - Wednesday

Tour Krakow, Poland’s cultural heart and former capital

In Krakow we will:

• Explore the Jewish Quarter of Kazimierz and its seven synagogues including the famous Remuh Synagogue & cemetery

• See the remains of the Jewish Ghetto and the train station where Jews were deported

• Visit the “Pharmacy,” the secret gateway to and from the Ghetto

• Tour Oskar Schindler’s Factory Museum

• Enjoy the beautiful culture and history of Krakow

 

8/13, Thursday 

Departing flights from Krakow airport for those returning to the US at the end of the tour

 

JoAnn Magnuson is an American Christian who has spent much of her adult life working in the field of Jewish-Christian relations. She and her parents lived with her Presbyterian grandmother during the early years of World War II and JoAnn’s first very clear memory is the night the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Her family gathered around the radio and heard President Roosevelt declare that the U.S.A. had been forced to join the western allies fighting against the Nazis and the Japanese. That night JoAnn’s grandma told her that, “this will be a terrible war, but Hitler will be defeated and the Jews will be back in their ancient land.” This message stuck with JoAnn from then on. She first went to Israel in 1977 and has led 69 study tours since then. In 1993 she went with friends from an interfaith book club on a tour of Poland. That opened up a new set of opportunities and contacts with Polish friends who were also involved in support for Jewish-Christian relations.