Rachel's Testimonial - Student & Holocaust Tour Participant 2019 & 2022

Traveling to Eastern Europe in 2019 with my high school classmates and again in 2022 with alumni was incredible.

I first learned about the Holocaust in grade 5 through Hana’s Suitcase and in grade 6 studying Anne Frank. In Mr. Kelly Hiebert’s IB history class, I learned more about Hitler, the S.S., and World War II. When Mr. Hiebert organized his first trip to Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic with Evolve Tours, I knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Seeing Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Dachau, and Lidice was unreal. After years of reading textbooks, standing on those grounds made the scale of suffering hard to process. Imagining the millions transported, separated, forced into labor, starved, and killed was numbing. Lidice was especially hard. From the road, it looks like a park, but the memorials and the children’s statues mark the horror. Seeing those statues made the atrocities feel real.

Exploring Warsaw, Prague, Berlin, Nuremberg, and Munich with their food, sights, and history was fantastic. Highlights included the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin Wall Memorial, Nazi Party Rally Grounds, Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Prague Castle, and Charles Bridge.

In 2022, I visited new places like Lublin, Krakow, Jozefow, Treblinka, Majdanek, Fisherman’s Bastion, Cesky Krumlov, and the Eagle’s Nest. Revisiting Auschwitz, Birkenau, Lidice, and the Jewish Quarter in Prague helped me see more details and understand what I missed the first time. The Museum of the History of Polish Jews was incredible—so much history to absorb.