Jeanette Loeb studied Jewish Studies at the University of Amsterdam and has been a guide at Amsterdam’s Jewish History Museum since 1998. It was in 1998 that she also began leading private tours to various groups of adults, students, families, tourists, and locals. Jeanette specializes in Jewish tours and works with you to design a tour that fits your needs and interests.
Guide Tag: Day Trip
Anita
Anita Stanislawska is a licensed Kraków City Guide and Kraków enthusiast, passionate about sharing her wonderful and magical city with tourists. With Anita, you can explore Poland’s former capital with a broader look of its historical relationship with the rest of Europe. Learn about past kings, popes, cultures, religions, and how they have all shaped the Kraków of present times on one of Anita’s specially curated tours.
Anita organizes private guided tours for individuals, small groups, and large groups, such as schools. Aside from traditional tours around historical sites and monuments, you can enlist in a Recreation and Day Spa in Kraków, a day of City Games, or a meeting with World War II survivors – experiences that can enrich your trip and make it all the more memorable. Typical tours include private guided trips within Kraków with a special focus on the Jewish district, Kazimierz, as well as memory tours to Auschwitz and Birkenau, historic tours of the Salt Mine, and nature-based tours to incredible sites like Zakopane, Tatra Mountains, Dunajec River, and the Pieniny Mountains.
If you’re interested in learning about another religion that has important ties in Poland’s history, Anita offers Catholic tours, among other options. Tours can be given in English, Russian, German, Italian and an array of other languages, either by the tour guide or with use of a translator. Regardless of your tour needs and desires, Anita is here to help you experience Kraków and Poland and all its historical and cultural treasures.
Christopher
There’s nothing like a personalized, private tour to enrich your experience of Poland. Christopher is a licensed, English-speaking tour guide, ready to take you on a journey around the beautiful city of Krakow. Christopher is a history-fanatic and has an amazing collection of interesting stories and anecdotes to share with his guests. He’s been a licensed taxi driver since 2014, and is happy to provide airport transfers if needed. Christopher has a degree in Economics (Tourism and Hotel Industry) from Krakow University, 20 years of experience as a hotel concierge, and another 12 years as a tour guide.
Christopher can also help you find great accommodation and places to eat based on any personal needs, dietary preferences, or just specific desires! With Christopher as your tour guide, you can enjoy a customizable tour plan and door-to-door service. He also offers genealogy services and ancestral tours of Poland, for a truly personal experience. Some of the private tours that Christopher has planned include the Tour of Old Town and the Krakow Jewish District Tour, both of which are about 3 hours long – or you can do a combined tour for 6 hours. He also offers Daily Krakow Old Town Shared Tour and the Daily Krakow Jewish District Shared Tour which are shared with groups of up to 10 people.
Christopher offers unique private tour experiences like the Salt Mine Wieliczka Private Tour where you can visit a UNESCO World Cultural site just 14 km outside of Krakow or a tour of Auschwitz Birkenau (7 hours). Nature lovers can enjoy more adventurous tours like Rafting on Dunajec River, the Ojcow National Park Tour, or a tour of Zakopane at the foothills of the Tatra Mountains. No matter what part of Krakow or Poland you want to explore, Christopher has a tour for you. He’s happy to work with groups as small as 2 and as large as 40, and his TripAdvisor reviews seem to speak for themselves. You can expect fast service, great communication, and a wonderful visit to Krakow with Christopher, a local tour guide ready to tailor to touring needs.
Jeremy Minsberg
Jeremy Minsberg – The Berlin Expert
If you’re looking for a private tour in English, Jeremy Minsberg, aka Mr. Berlin, might just be your guy. Jeremy is an American Jew who has been enjoying the exciting Berlin life for over 17 years. TripAdvisor has given him the Certificate of Excellence 2017 and he’s received a score of 99% from hundreds of happy tourists. So what makes Mr. Berlin’s tours so great?
If you want to hear more about Jewish history or learn about architecture, he’ll make sure your topics of choice are covered. Jeremy’s tours are all in English but he does things like the locals do – you’ll explore the city using public transportation from the Underground and the S-Bahn to biking and walking, you’ll see Berlin from many angles and perspectives. Jeremy does his tours out of passion and his love of Berlin and all its amazing history, so he doesn’t offer set fees and instead encourages his guests to name their price. Tours usually last between half a day and a full day, depending on weather, interest, time, and sights on the agenda.
Some of Jeremy’s amazing tour options include:
- Berlin Overview Tour: see all the top sites in one grand afternoon
- Jewish Berlin Tour: explore the ups-and-downs of Jewish life in this city
- Cold War Berlin Tour: learn how a city rebuilds itself after division
- Destruction and Construction Tour: the must-take tour for architecture fanatics
- Times of Terror Tour: visit the sites of the darkest period of Berlin, the Nazi era
- Gay Berlin Tour: enjoy the tolerant, open-minded history of Berlin
- Bike Tour of Berlin: explore the city on two wheels and from a whole new perspective
Minsberg also offers a few tours that head out of Berlin proper. His Potsdam tour takes you to the neighboring state of Brandenburg, known for hosting the Prussian kings and Germain Kaiser. He also offers a tour of Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp about 45 minutes north of Berlin. If you don’t want to walk, there’s also an option to rent a limousine or private car for the tour – driver included. Lastly, Jeremy offers a Daytime Companion option where you can simply ‘hang out’ for the day exploring the city from Jeremy’s perspective.
One of the nicest features of Jeremy’s tours is that he donates a portion of his fees to a local charity. Minsberg supports cultural organizations, a Berlin Jewish educational center, and a Berlin school that helps HIV positive children integrate into mainstream society. So by going on a tour with The Berlin Expert, you are not only experiencing a unique and exciting side of Berlin, but contributing to the local community.
Nirit Ben-Joseph
Nirit Ben Joseph started working as a tour guide in Berlin in 1989. She offers comfortable, luxurious, air-conditioned van tours for up to six guests and uses a microphone and loudspeaker so she’s easy to hear. Nirit offers tours on subjects that can be very specific and detailed or more general. While most of her tours last six hours, different subjects can be combined to create multiple-day tours if requested.
Nirit creates a personal experience for her clients. She’ll pick you up at your hotel and finish the tour in your location of choice. Her tours are friendly for children and youth, so no need to reserve separate activities for younger family members. On top of that, Nirit will help you with hotel and restaurant reservations and even recommend cultural events for your visit. One of the nicest things that Nirit helps with is searching for family connections. For visitors coming to Berlin who have a family history, Nirit will help search archives and cemetery data to find the story of your ancestors.
Join one of Nirit Ben Joseph’s educational and exciting tours of Berlin and you’ll be exploring this fascinating city in comfort and style. Some of her tours include:
- The Best of Berlin: a six-hour tour exploring the highlights of the city, the best option for visitors who have a limited amount of time
- The Jewish Tour: learn about all the trials and tribulations that fill the rich history of Jews in Berlin and how the community has recuperated since then
- The Architecture Tour: explore the wonders of modern architecture and see how the urban part of the city has grown over the years
- The Cold War and the Berlin Wall: delve into the dark recent history of Berlin and the building and destruction of the Wall as you explore it yourselves
- Wannsee and Potsdam Tour: visit the prime location of the Potsdam Conference, the palace of Sanssouci and the palace of Cecilien Hof, in Berlin’s neighboring Brandenburg
- The Art Tour: see the best of Berlin’s art scene by exploring some of the most famous and unseen galleries the city has to offer
For guests who are exploring other parts of Germany, Nirit also offers tours in Dresden and Leipzig. The tour of Sachsenhausen concentration camp is highly recommended and it’s just a 45-minute trip out of central Berlin. While Nirit started studying in Tel Aviv University in 1987, her move to to Berlin in 1987 captivated her enough to stay in the city. Now, Nirit shares the parts that made her fall in love with Berlin with her tour guests.
Eyal Dov Roth
Born and raised in Israel, Eyal Roth moved to Berlin in 2010 and has been a tour guide for more than 6 years. Enchanted by the dark history of the European Jews and his own heritage as the grandson of four Holocaust survivors, Eyal became an expert in all things Jewish in Berlin. Given the sensitivity of the tours subject matter, Eyal encourages asking questions and engaging in conversation while also giving tour participants time to process things in silence.
Join Eyal on a four or five-hour tour walking, biking or driving around the city while uncovering the history of the Jews of Berlin. Eyal will meet you at your hotel and take you through the old Jewish quarter, the Jewish cemetery of Berlin, and the secret, underground life of Jews during the Nazi regime. The tour will also include the Otto Weidt museum, the AHAVA orphanage, the New Synagogue Berlin, and many other historical Jewish sights.
The tour continues on to cover the Jewish persecution in the early 1900’s and the infamous Platform 17 where the Jews of Berlin were sent to the concentration camps. Eyal is open to adding and removing sites from the tour depending on the needs and wants of his clients, so you can get a more tailored experience if you’d like. He can also include a coffee or lunch break and is accommodating to youth and people with disabilities. This private tour is a great way to experience a personal connection to the rich history of the Jews of Berlin.
While Eyal may focus on the Jewish history of the city, he does offer a variety of other tours:
- The Introductory Tour of Berlin – cover all the basics by putting 700 years of history into just a few hours
- A Tour Following the Berlin Wall – find the method to the madness on this trip along the infamous Wall
- The Alternative Berlin Tour – head off the beaten path on this art-focused tour
- The Night Tour – experience the famous clubs, bars, pubs and galleries of this raging city
- Bike Tours – see more in a shorter span of time, great for those on a time limit
Eyal Dov Roth’s tours are one of Tripadvisor’s top 5 recommended outdoor activities and in 2016 he received their Certificate of Excellence. For those truly wanting to delve into the incredibly complicated history of Berlin’s Jews, a tour with Eyal is a must.
Yoav and Natalie Sapir
If you’re looking for an in-depth tour of Jewish Berlin, Yoav and Natalie Sapir’s Jewish Heritage Tours are informative and captivating. What’s more, they shed a whole new perspective on both the history of Jews in Berlin and the modern revival of Jewish life.
Yoav was born in Haifa, Israel to a father Holocaust survivor and a mother whose family escaped Poland before the war. The Holocaust was a real presence in his home as a child and as he grew, history became his passion. He came to Berlin in 2006 to complete his studies in German-Jewish history, and since then has been giving tours, translating academic literature, and working as a journalist for Israeli and German newspapers and magazines.
Natalie was born in West-Germany and came to Berlin in 2009 to study history and political science. In Berlin, she met Yoav and discovered Judaism and she also continued on to study Jewish studies and philosophy. She believes that Berlin is “the most beautiful city in Germany and maybe even in the whole world,” and brings her passion into her guiding.
The Berlin Jewish Heritage Tour is the Sapir’s most popular tour. It delves into the history of Jews in Berlin, addressing the question, Who were the Jews of Berlin that made this community so successful before the Holocaust? The Sapirs relay stories of rescue and survival during the Holocaust while standing at the actual spots they occurred. Yoav and Natalie also discuss the revival of Jewish life in Berlin and contemporary Jewish life.
The tour takes place in Berlin’s Jewish Quarter and includes stops at the following locations, among others:
- The Central Council of Jews in Germany
- Two neighboring rabbinical seminaries — reform and orthodox — that made Berlin important in religious terms
- The “hackesche” courtyards, where the founder of Reform Judaism lived
- Jewish elementary schools and the contemporary Jewish high school
- Old and new synagogues
- The oldest Jewish cemetery in Berlin’s historical center, where Moses Mendelssohn is buried
- Memorials including the Stumbling Stones, the Deserted Room, the Missing House, and the Block of Women
In addition to the popular Jewish Heritage Tour, the Sapirs offer the following tours:
- Advanced Jewish Berlin Tour, during which Yoav and Natalie explore off-the-beaten-track locations in West Berlin.
- Cold War Tour, a unique tour that takes tourists to “odd locations” and discusses the role of Germany in the cold war, specifically addressing the division of Berlin.
