In honor of the 70th anniversary of the Auschwitz liberation, the Israeli tour company Hebro Travel is planning to offer what is being advertised as the first ever gay tour of the former concentration camp.
According to The Jewish Daily Forward, Hebro’s “Poland & Prague Pride Trip, scheduled for August, will include a Jewish heritage tour of the Schindler’s List route, including visits to historic synagogues and stops at Auschwitz and Theresienstadt.
The tour will conclude at Prague’s Gay Pride Festival.
“Some people did say, ‘How can you go from touring concentration camps to celebrating Pride? I look at it the same way as Jewish trips that go from the camps to Israel to celebrate continuity,” Jayson Littman, the founder of Hebro Travel and the grandchild of Hungarian survivors of Auschwitz, told the Forward. “I knew I was touching on uncharted territory. I kept hearing, ‘Who wants to go on a trip like that?’ But many more people said it’s a wonderful idea. And surprisingly few people realize how many gay people were murdered in the Holocaust.”
Details of the trip are still underway, but Littman says it will likely “involve laying a wreath, having a rabbi there from the local community, and inviting someone from the local LGBT population to speak as well.”
For more information: www.hebrotravel.com