🕯️ When History Gets Personal: How to Emotionally Prepare for a Heritage Trip
✡️ Introduction
Visiting Europe to explore your Jewish roots is more than just a journey—it’s a pilgrimage through memory, where names and places turn into faces and stories.
But when your journey includes towns emptied by deportations, cemeteries full of erased generations, or the gates of Auschwitz… history stops being abstract. It becomes deeply personal.
At My Heritage Road, we often walk beside travelers who, for the first time, return to the exact towns, homes, or synagogues where their family once lived—and died. That moment is powerful, and sometimes overwhelming.
This guide is here to help you prepare emotionally for such a journey, and to ensure it becomes not just a moment of grief—but of connection, strength, and healing.
🧠 1. Know What to Expect—And What You Don’t Have To Do
Visiting Holocaust sites or family hometowns can trigger:
Grief and tears, even if you didn’t know those relatives
Guilt for being the one who "survived"
Rage at what was lost, erased, or ignored
Unexpected numbness or detachment
All of that is normal.
💬 You are not required to feel anything specific. The experience will come as it comes—and that's okay.
Sometimes, the most emotional travelers are those who expected to feel nothing. Others may feel nothing in a gas chamber, and then break down days later while reading a family name on a tombstone. Allow yourself to experience your own timeline.
✍️ 2. Journal or Speak to Someone Beforehand
Try answering some questions in writing or in conversation before the trip:
What do I already know about my family's story?
What do I want to find?
What am I afraid of feeling?
What would I want to tell those who didn’t survive?
These thoughts don’t need to be polished—they just need to be honest. You can return to them after the trip, too.
🪦 3. Prepare Rituals or Words of Reflection
When standing at a grave, memorial wall, or camp entrance, many people feel unsure:
What should I do? What should I say?
You might consider:
Reciting Kaddish, El Male Rachamim, or Psalm 23
Leaving a stone on a grave
Reading a name aloud
Simply placing your hand on a wall and closing your eyes
🕊️ Even silence can be a sacred response.
We can also help you arrange for a rabbi or guide to join and support your visit, if you wish.
🧒 4. If You’re Traveling with Family (Especially Children)
Let everyone in your group know:
What the site represents
Why it matters to your family
What emotions may come up
Let children ask questions—even hard ones. You don't need to have every answer. Be present, and reassure them that sadness is not something to hide or “fix”—it’s part of remembering.
🕍 5. Balance the Journey: Include Light with the Heavy
It’s okay to include joyful, cultural, or beautiful experiences alongside difficult ones.
Walk the streets of the former Jewish quarter
Visit a rebuilt synagogue
Enjoy a Shabbat dinner in the city your great-grandparents once lived
Talk with local Jewish communities who are rebuilding and thriving
✨ Our past includes tragedy—but also resilience, faith, and survival. Your trip should honor all of it.
❤️ Final Thought: This Is Not Just Their Story—It’s Yours Too
When history gets personal, it can shake you. But it can also anchor you, giving you a stronger sense of identity and purpose than ever before.
We believe that walking in the footsteps of your ancestors is an act of both remembrance and renewal. And we’re here to walk that path with you.
📩 If you're planning a trip to sites of personal meaning, contact us at kacperbielaska@myheritageroad.com for customized, thoughtful guidance—emotionally and logistically.
