The journey in one line
20 places on this journey in Poland, Netherlands, Israel, Germany, United States, Czech Republic, France, Belgium, Ukraine, Lithuania, Austria, Russia and Hungary so far. The first rung is 2 of them, and the list keeps growing.
This is a reflection journey. It keeps a record of where you have been and nothing else. There is no score here, no ranking, and nothing to complete. The places on it do different work. Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen and Mauthausen are the ground itself. Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Mémorial de la Shoah hold the names and the archives. The Wannsee villa and the Topography of Terror ask about the people who planned it. Some visitors come once in a lifetime. Some return. Both are ordinary.
Six million Jews were murdered, along with Roma and Sinti, disabled people, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, gay men, Jehovah's Witnesses and political prisoners. The Shoah was not carried out in one place, and that is why this list crosses so many borders. Most of these memorials exist because survivors and families insisted on them, often against official reluctance. The names on the wall at Pinkas were erased once and painted back. Babyn Yar was built over. Remembering was fought for. What a visit is for is the visitor's own business. Learning, mourning, family history, obligation, or simply being there are all reasons.
Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Anne Frank House both require booking well in advance and sell out. Auschwitz entry passes are free but must come from visit.auschwitz.org, which is the only official channel. Several sites are large and outdoors. Auschwitz-Birkenau takes at least three and a half hours across both parts. Bergen-Belsen and Treblinka are open ground and remote. Terezín is a whole town plus a fortress. Babyn Yar is in a country at war and Moscow carries its own advisory. Check your government's current travel advice before planning either. Several memorials advise against bringing younger children. Those limits are in each place's access note.
Rungs
- Two places on this journey visited: 2 places on this journey
- Six places on this journey visited: 6 places on this journey
- Twelve places on this journey visited: 12 places on this journey
This list is open and keeps growing. Reaching a rung is not finishing a culture.
Where it goes
Preparing the map. The order below is the same information.
- 1Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, Oświęcim, Poland
- 2Anne Frank House, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- 3Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel
- 4Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin, Germany
- 5United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, United States
- 6Pinkas Synagogue Memorial, Prague, Czech Republic
- 7Topography of Terror, Berlin, Germany
- 8Terezín Memorial, Ghetto Museum, Terezín, Czech Republic
- 9House of the Wannsee Conference, Berlin, Germany
- 10Treblinka Museum, Treblinka, Poland
- 11Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, Dachau, Germany
- 12Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris, France
- 13Kazerne Dossin, Mechelen, Belgium
- 14Babyn Yar, Kyiv, Ukraine
- 15Paneriai Memorial, Vilnius, Lithuania
- 16Bergen-Belsen Memorial, Lohheide, Germany
- 17Mauthausen Memorial, Mauthausen, Austria
- 18Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum, Oranienburg, Germany
- 19Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, Moscow, Russia
- 20Holocaust Memorial Center, Budapest, Hungary
20 places on this journey, in order.
The places on this journey
What a visit means here. A recorded visit means entering the memorial, the camp grounds or the museum. Visits on this journey are private by default and are counted only as places visited. The number is a record of where you have been and nothing more.
- 1
Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum
Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau w Oświęcimiu
Oświęcim, Poland
Photo: Logaritmo, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsThe entrance to the Auschwitz I museum grounds, in winter, with no people in frame. About one million one hundred thousand people were murdered here, roughly a million of them Jews. Auschwitz I holds the museum and the archive. Birkenau, two miles away, holds the ramp, the ruined gas chambers and the ground the ashes were spread on. It is the place people mean when they say they went.
What counts as a visit
The Auschwitz I museum grounds and the Birkenau site, which are visited together on one entry pass.
Access
Entry passes are free but must be reserved in advance, and visit.auschwitz.org is the only official booking site. Photo identification is checked. Visits by children under fourteen are not recommended. Allow at least three and a half hours for both parts. Checked 16 September 2026.
A place of reflectionPermit required
Check access · last checked September 16, 2026
- 2
Anne Frank House
Anne Frank Huis
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Photo: Massimo Catarinella, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe canal house on the Prinsengracht. Eight people hid behind a bookcase in the back annexe of this canal house for just over two years. Anne Frank was fifteen when she died at Bergen-Belsen. Her father was the only one of the eight to survive, and he published what she had written. The rooms are kept empty, as he asked.
What counts as a visit
The front house, the moveable bookcase and the rooms of the secret annexe.
Access
Entry is by timed online ticket only and tickets sell out well ahead. The annexe has steep narrow stairs and no lift. Photography inside is not allowed. Checked 16 September 2026.
A place of reflection
Check access · last checked September 16, 2026
- 3
Yad Vashem
יד ושם
Jerusalem, Israel
Photo: Hagai Agmon-Snir حچاي اچمون-سنير חגי אגמון-שניר, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe museum's concrete prism cut through the hillside. Yad Vashem is Israel's national memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and the keeper of the names. Its Hall of Names holds pages of testimony for millions of individuals. The Children's Memorial, the Avenue of the Righteous and the Valley of the Communities are separate places on one hillside campus.
What counts as a visit
The Holocaust History Museum, the Hall of Names, the Children's Memorial and the outdoor memorials on the Mount of Remembrance.
Access
Entry is free but all visits must be booked in advance. Closed on Saturdays and Jewish holidays, with shorter Friday hours. The history museum is not open to children under ten. Allow at least three hours. Checked 16 September 2026.
A place of reflection
Check access · last checked September 16, 2026
- 4
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas
Berlin, Germany
Photo: NoRud, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe field of stelae from the edge. Peter Eisenman's field of two thousand seven hundred and eleven concrete slabs sits between the Brandenburg Gate and Potsdamer Platz, on ground the German state chose deliberately. The slabs carry no names. The information centre beneath the field does, drawing on Yad Vashem's records.
What counts as a visit
The field of stelae, which is open ground, and the information centre below it.
Access
The field is open at all hours and free. The information centre has its own opening days and security screening. The memorial's own rules ask visitors not to climb or sit on the stelae. Checked 16 September 2026.
A place of reflection
Check access · last checked September 16, 2026
- 5
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Washington, DC, United States
Photo: Smash the Iron Cage, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe museum's main hall, showing the building rather than its subject. Congress put the national Holocaust memorial beside the Mall, and it opened in 1993. The permanent exhibition runs downward through three floors from the rise of the Nazi state to liberation. The museum is also a working research institute, and its archive traces victims and survivors for families.
What counts as a visit
The permanent exhibition, the Hall of Remembrance and the special exhibitions.
Access
Free entry with timed passes in the busy months. The permanent exhibition is not recommended for children under eleven. Security screening at the door. Checked 16 September 2026.
A place of reflection
Check access · last checked September 16, 2026
- 6
Pinkas Synagogue Memorial
Pinkasova synagoga
Prague, Czech Republic
Photo: VitVit, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe synagogue exterior beside the old cemetery. The walls of this sixteenth century synagogue carry the names of the seventy eight thousand Jews of Bohemia and Moravia who were murdered, hand painted with each person's dates. The Communist authorities erased them in 1968. They were painted again after 1989. Upstairs are children's drawings from Terezín.
What counts as a visit
The synagogue interior with the names on the walls, and the children's drawings on the upper floor.
Access
Part of the Jewish Museum in Prague circuit. Closed on Saturdays and Jewish holidays. Photography inside is not allowed. Checked 16 September 2026.
A place of reflection
Check access · last checked September 16, 2026
- 7
Topography of Terror
Topographie des Terrors
Berlin, Germany
Photo: Arild Vågen, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe documentation centre on the cleared site. This is the ground the Gestapo, the SS and the Reich Security Main Office worked from. The buildings are gone. The documentation centre stands on the cleared site and asks who the perpetrators were rather than only who suffered, which is a different and uncomfortable question.
What counts as a visit
The indoor documentation centre and the outdoor trench exhibition along the surviving Wall segment.
Access
Free entry. Open daily, with the outdoor areas closing at nightfall. Checked 16 September 2026.
A place of reflection
Check access · last checked September 16, 2026
- 8
Terezín Memorial, Ghetto Museum
Památník Terezín, Muzeum ghetta
Terezín, Czech Republic
Photo: Gerd Eichmann, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe entrance to the Ghetto Museum. Terezín was dressed up for a Red Cross visit in 1944 and filmed as a model settlement. It was a transit ghetto. Around eighty eight thousand people were sent on from here to the killing centres. Its inmates ran lectures, concerts and a children's magazine inside it. Fifteen thousand children passed through and few came back.
What counts as a visit
The Ghetto Museum and the Magdeburg Barracks in the town, and the Small Fortress across the river on the same ticket.
Access
Several buildings across the town and the fortress, on one ticket. Open daily with seasonal hours. Allow half a day. Checked 16 September 2026.
A place of reflection
Check access · last checked September 16, 2026
- 9
House of the Wannsee Conference
Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz
Berlin, Germany
Photo: A.Savin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe villa seen from the garden. On 20 January 1942 fifteen senior officials met in this lakeside villa over breakfast to coordinate the murder of Europe's Jews. The meeting lasted about ninety minutes. One copy of the minutes survived. The house is now a memorial and an education centre, and the minutes are on the table.
What counts as a visit
The villa's permanent exhibition, including the conference room, and the garden.
Access
Free entry. Open daily with published hours. It is a long way out of central Berlin, by train and then bus. Checked 16 September 2026.
A place of reflection
Check access · last checked September 16, 2026
- 10
Treblinka Museum
Muzeum Treblinka
Treblinka, Poland
Photo: Tajchman Maria, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe field of stones, each carrying the name of a place the victims came from. Around nine hundred thousand people were murdered at Treblinka in about fifteen months, most of them Jews from the Warsaw ghetto. The Germans razed the camp and planted it over. There is nothing left to see, which is the point. A field of seventeen thousand stones now stands where the camp was.
What counts as a visit
The memorial field, the symbolic ramp and the museum building at the entrance.
Access
Remote, in forest, reached by car. Open ground with seasonal hours at the museum building. Checked 16 September 2026.
A place of reflection
Check access · last checked September 16, 2026
- 11
Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site
KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau
Dachau, Germany
Photo: Wolfgang Manousek from Dormagen, Germany, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe maintenance building that now houses the memorial's exhibition. Dachau opened in March 1933, weeks after the Nazis took power, and was the model the other camps were built from. More than two hundred thousand people were imprisoned here. It was not primarily a killing centre for Jews, but Jewish prisoners were held here from the first year to the last.
What counts as a visit
The memorial site: the maintenance building exhibition, the roll call square, the reconstructed barracks and the religious memorials.
Access
Free entry. Open daily. Audio guides and guided tours are charged separately. Visits by children under twelve are not recommended. Checked 16 September 2026.
A place of reflection
Check access · last checked September 16, 2026
- 12
Mémorial de la Shoah
Mémorial de la Shoah
Paris, France
Photo: BrnGrby, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe crypt with its black marble star. France deported around seventy six thousand Jews, and the French state took part. The Wall of Names in the courtyard carries all of them, year by year. Below the courtyard is the crypt with its black marble star, and beyond that the largest Holocaust archive in Europe.
What counts as a visit
The Wall of Names, the crypt and the permanent museum below.
Access
Free entry. Closed on Saturdays and on some Jewish holidays. Security screening at the door. Checked 16 September 2026.
A place of reflection
Check access · last checked September 16, 2026
- 13
Kazerne Dossin
Kazerne Dossin
Mechelen, Belgium
Photo: Mertend.D, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe museum building opposite the former barracks. Twenty five thousand Jews and Roma were assembled in this barracks in Mechelen and put on twenty eight trains to Auschwitz. The museum opposite the barracks builds its main wall from their photographs, one face at a time, and asks how ordinary people are brought to do this.
What counts as a visit
The museum galleries and the memorial in the original barracks building across the street.
Access
Closed on some public holidays and on Jewish holidays. The museum and the barracks memorial are on one ticket. Checked 16 September 2026.
A place of reflection
Check access · last checked September 16, 2026
- 14
Babyn Yar
Бабин Яр
Kyiv, Ukraine
Photo: Віктор Полянко, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe memorial complex in the park above the ravine. Over two days at the end of September 1941, thirty three thousand seven hundred and seventy one Jews were shot in this ravine. Tens of thousands more were killed here afterwards. The Soviet authorities filled the ravine and built over it, and for decades there was nothing to say what had happened.
What counts as a visit
The memorial park, the menorah monument and the memorial centre's installations across the ravine.
Access
Kyiv is under a war. Check your government's travel advice before any journey to Ukraine, and expect air raid alerts. Parts of the memorial were damaged by a strike in 2022. Checked 16 September 2026.
A place of reflectionTravel advisory
Check access · last checked September 16, 2026
- 15
Paneriai Memorial
Panerių memorialas
Vilnius, Lithuania
Photo: Andrej Kuźniečyk, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe memorial among the trees at Paneriai. Between 1941 and 1944 around one hundred thousand people were shot in these pits in the forest outside Vilnius, about seventy thousand of them Jews. The pits had been dug by the Soviets for fuel tanks. This is where the Jerusalem of Lithuania ended.
What counts as a visit
The memorial paths between the pits and the small museum building at the entrance.
Access
Run by the Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History. The grounds are open ground in forest. The museum building has limited seasonal hours. Reached by local train or bus. Checked 16 September 2026.
A place of reflectionSeasonal
Check access · last checked September 16, 2026
- 16
Bergen-Belsen Memorial
Gedenkstätte Bergen-Belsen
Lohheide, Germany
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Photo: Tsungam, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe heath with a mass grave marker and the obelisk, a landscape view with no people. Bergen-Belsen had no gas chambers. Around fifty two thousand people died here of starvation, typhus and neglect, most of them in the last months. British troops filmed what they found in April 1945, and those pictures shaped how the world understood the camps. Anne Frank and her sister died here weeks before liberation.
What counts as a visit
The documentation centre and the camp grounds with the mass graves and the obelisk.
Access
Free entry. The grounds are a large open heath and take time to walk. Remote, best reached by car. Checked 16 September 2026.
A place of reflection
Check access · last checked September 16, 2026
- 17
Mauthausen Memorial
KZ-Gedenkstätte Mauthausen
Mauthausen, Austria
Photo: Kasa Fue, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsOne of the national memorials in the memorial park. Mauthausen was graded by the SS as a camp of the harshest category, built around a granite quarry where prisoners carried stone up one hundred and eighty six steps. Around ninety thousand people died here. Hungarian Jews were driven here on death marches in the last winter of the war.
What counts as a visit
The camp grounds, the quarry steps and the memorial park of national monuments.
Access
Free entry to the grounds, with charges for audio guides and tours. The quarry steps are steep and the site is exposed. Checked 16 September 2026.
A place of reflection
Check access · last checked September 16, 2026
- 18
Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum
Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen
Oranienburg, Germany
Photo: Acediscovery, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe central memorial obelisk on the camp grounds. Sachsenhausen was built in 1936 as a model camp and as the headquarters that administered the whole concentration camp system. After the November pogrom of 1938 six thousand Jewish men were brought here in a single week. The Soviets then ran an internment camp on the site until 1950, and the memorial addresses both.
What counts as a visit
The camp grounds, the museum buildings and the memorial.
Access
Free entry. Open daily, with some buildings closed in winter. Reached by S-Bahn from Berlin and a walk. Checked 16 September 2026.
A place of reflection
Check access · last checked September 16, 2026
- 19
Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center
Еврейский музей и центр толерантности
Moscow, Russia
Photo: Ludvig14, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe Melnikov bus garage that houses the museum. Housed in Konstantin Melnikov's Bakhmetevsky bus garage, this museum covers Jewish life in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, the Pale of Settlement, the Holocaust on Soviet soil and the long Soviet silence about it. Its Holocaust section covers killings that happened on the ground it stands on.
What counts as a visit
The permanent exhibition and the Holocaust section in the converted garage.
Access
Closed on Saturdays and Jewish holidays. Check your government's current travel advice for Russia before planning any journey. Checked 16 September 2026.
A place of reflectionTravel advisory
Check access · last checked September 16, 2026
- 20
Holocaust Memorial Center
Holokauszt Emlékközpont
Budapest, Hungary
Photo: VinceB, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe memorial centre and the restored synagogue behind it. Hungary deported around four hundred and thirty thousand Jews to Auschwitz in eight weeks in 1944, the fastest deportation of the war, carried out by Hungarian authorities. The memorial centre is built around the restored Páva Street synagogue and is direct about the Hungarian state's own part.
What counts as a visit
The permanent exhibition and the restored Páva Street synagogue in the same complex.
Access
Closed on Mondays. The site has been through periods of closure and rebuilding, so confirm before travelling. Checked 16 September 2026.
A place of reflection
Check access · last checked September 16, 2026
Respect and access
These are burial grounds, whether or not they are marked as such. Do not eat, do not use the site as a backdrop for photographs of yourself, and do not climb on anything. At the Berlin memorial and at every camp site, the custodians ask visitors not to pose on or among the stones and structures. Follow that, whatever you see other people doing. Do not photograph other visitors, who may be grieving. Photography is restricted inside the Anne Frank House and Pinkas Synagogue, and the restrictions are not decorative. Do not assume anything about who a fellow visitor is or why they came. This journey carries no claim about your ancestry, your religion or your politics.
- Permit required
- Entry needs a permit, a booking or a ticket arranged in advance.
- Travel advisory
- A government advisory currently applies to this area. Read the current advisory before planning anything.
- Seasonal
- Access follows a season, a calendar or an event rather than being open year round.
- A place of reflection
- This is a memorial or a site of atrocity. Visitors are asked to be quiet, to follow the custodian's guidance on photography, and to treat it as somewhere people grieve.
Opening times, prices, permits and eligibility change. Nothing on this page is a statement about today. Follow the Check access link on a place before you plan around it.
Sources
- auschwitz.orghttps://www.auschwitz.org/en/ · checked September 16, 2026
- annefrank.orghttps://www.annefrank.org/en/museum/ · checked September 16, 2026
- yadvashem.orghttps://www.yadvashem.org/ · checked September 16, 2026
- stiftung-denkmal.dehttps://www.stiftung-denkmal.de/en/memorials/memorial-to-the-murdered-jews-of-europe/ · checked September 16, 2026
- ushmm.orghttps://www.ushmm.org/ · checked September 16, 2026
- jewishmuseum.czhttps://www.jewishmuseum.cz/en/explore/sites/pinkas-synagogue/ · checked September 16, 2026
- topographie.dehttps://www.topographie.de/en/ · checked September 16, 2026
- pamatnik-terezin.czhttps://www.pamatnik-terezin.cz/ · checked September 16, 2026
- ghwk.dehttps://www.ghwk.de/en/ · checked September 16, 2026
- muzeumtreblinka.euhttps://muzeumtreblinka.eu/en/ · checked September 16, 2026
- kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.dehttps://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/en/ · checked September 16, 2026
- memorialdelashoah.orghttps://www.memorialdelashoah.org/en/ · checked September 16, 2026
- kazernedossin.euhttps://kazernedossin.eu/en/ · checked September 16, 2026
- babynyar.orghttps://babynyar.org/en · checked September 16, 2026
- jmuseum.lthttps://www.jmuseum.lt/en/ · checked September 16, 2026
- bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.dehttps://bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de/en/ · checked September 16, 2026
- mauthausen-memorial.orghttps://www.mauthausen-memorial.org/en · checked September 16, 2026
- sachsenhausen-sbg.dehttps://www.sachsenhausen-sbg.de/en/ · checked September 16, 2026
- jewish-museum.ruhttps://www.jewish-museum.ru/en/ · checked September 16, 2026
- hdke.huhttps://hdke.hu/en/ · checked September 16, 2026
TravelDay selected and grouped these places. Naming a custodian, a government agency or UNESCO as a source is not a claim that any of them endorsed this journey.
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