Our Guests’ reviews

Northwestern Hillel has partnered with the Taube Center to bring students to Poland since 2018, and year after year, this trip continues to exceed our expectations. This spring, we brought 10 students on a journey through Jewish history, heritage, and resilience. Unlike a conventional Holocaust tour, this experience goes beyond the historical sites to explore what Jewish life in Poland looks like today. The itinerary struck a rare and impactful balance: deep engagement with Holocaust history alongside genuine moments of joy and connection, like building relationships with young Jews and Ukrainian refugees through Hillel Poland. Students left not only with a deeper understanding of history, but with a renewed sense of their own Jewish identity and what it means to be part of a global Jewish community. For any Hillel seeking to offer students a transformative experience rooted in global Jewish life, we cannot recommend this trip highly enough. The Taube Center offers a carefully curated, logistically seamless experience that gives students an experiential learning opportunity they'll carry with them long after they return home.

My experience over the past two years staffing the MSU Hillel Immersive Experience Trip to Poland with the Taube Center has been incredibly impactful for both my students and me. From the pre-trip preparation to the trip itself, everything is organized and handled with great care and ease. I always felt well cared for and well communicated throughout the process. I admire Aleksandra and her team for creating such a thoughtful itinerary that encompasses every detail, making the trip both enjoyable and meaningful. It effectively fosters a connection to the Holocaust and highlights the resilience of the Jewish community today. I wholeheartedly recommend this trip to any Hillel looking to provide their students with an opportunity to connect with their Jewish identities outside of Israel and experience life beyond America. It truly is a trip of a lifetime—educational and profoundly meaningful.

Taube Jewish Heritage Tours did an amazing job coordinating an engaging and educational tour. Coming in with minimal knowledge about Poland and Jewry, I feel like I have learned so much.

I just wanted to again thank Jakub Lysiak and the Taube Center for making our trip to Poland so meaningful. You are an amazing and knowledgeable leader, who introduced us to places and people we would otherwise never have met. The care that you take in planning and the generosity and patience that you bring to everything that you do enriched our experience in Poland beyond anything I could have imagined. I really don’t have words to express my appreciation, but please know that I am indebted to you.

Kaja was superb. This is what I wrote earlier: She was marvelous! Professional, genial, super responsible, “relatable.” She instilled total confidence in them, keeping touch before and after every tour/event via our WhatsApp group. She was a font of helpful information (where to get calcium pills, pierogi, etc.). Guiding students to contemporary Poland is always deeply satisfying. As the trip progresses, one can sense the static grey image of the country becoming enlivened by its dynamic colorful present. At the same time, students are exposed to all of Poland’s complexities—in particular its relationship to its Jewish population, past and present—which challenges them to think about how history is remembered and narrated and whose story is written out and whose is foregrounded. My students remarked to me that they will never be able to go to a museum again without asking what its driving themes are and what was left out.

The moment […] allowed my sister and me to share our legacy and brought us closer together; in our version of a roots trip, the bond we achieved along the way, as my sister said, was ‘one root we actually found.

We meet with Poles, both Jewish and not Jewish, to understand that Poland is no longer part of what we used to quaintly call 'Eastern Europe'; that is a relic of the Cold War. [...] Not only are Jews discovering the important place that Poland played in their history, but Poles are discovering they can't understand their own history without thinking about Jews. People are learning about one another and from one another, and they are also learning about their own identities.

Discover your past, the present, and our future with TJHT. This unique team has put together a tour of our history in Poland like no other. Our Jewish story is incomplete without experiencing the agony, loss, recovery and restoration of this crucial chapter. I was moved, devastated, but ultimately inspired by what was and what needs to be now.

ADL has traveled around the globe on many fact-finding missions but we have never received more valued assistance and wise council than what Helise and her team provided for us. We look forward to partnering with the Taube Center in the months and years ahead.