This letter is not directed at the people going on this trip. It is not directed at the historian who was hired to guide it.
It is directed squarely at the company that created this advertisement and the people who approved it.
I looked at this ad several times because I honestly could not believe what I was seeing.
There, beneath one of the most horrifying images in Jewish history—the entrance to Auschwitz, the gateway through which more than a million Jews were marched to their deaths—appear the selling points: “5 Star Hotels.” “Gourmet Meals.”
How?
How did this make it from a designer’s computer to the printer without a single person saying, “Stop. This is wrong.”
Auschwitz is not a tourist attraction. It is not another stop on a European itinerary. It is the largest Jewish cemetery in the world. It is soaked with the blood of our parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, and children.
That gate was the entrance to hell.
Jews walked through those gates starving, terrified, beaten, humiliated, stripped of every ounce of human dignity. Mothers carried babies through those gates, never to emerge. Fathers watched their families disappear forever. Children were marched directly to the gas chambers. The elderly, the weak, and the sick were sent to their deaths within hours of arriving.
Millions never came back out.
And beneath that image we advertise…
“Gourmet Meals.”
Read those words again.
“Gourmet Meals.”
If those words placed beneath the entrance to Auschwitz do not make a person shudder, something has gone terribly wrong.
This is not ancient history. This happened within living memory. There are still Holocaust survivors among us. There are still Jews who roll up their sleeves every morning to reveal the Auschwitz numbers permanently burned into their flesh. Imagine one of them opening a print publication and seeing this horror in front of their eyes.
Imagine surviving Auschwitz only to see the gates of that nightmare transformed into the backdrop for a luxury travel advertisement.
No one is criticizing the fact that participants will sleep in comfortable hotels or eat good food. That is not the issue.
The issue is judgment.
The issue is sensitivity.
The issue is respect.
There is a line that should never be crossed, and this advertisement crossed it.
Some places are so sacred in their tragedy that they demand silence, reverence, and humility. Auschwitz is one of them. Every stone cries out. Every inch of that ground is mixed with the ashes of kedoshim. It is a place where entire kehillos vanished, where Torah giants, innocent children, mothers, fathers, and babies were systematically exterminated simply because they were Jews.
To use that image as the backdrop for selling luxury accommodations and gourmet dining is profoundly insensitive. It diminishes the solemnity of the place and sends a message that no Jewish publication or organization should ever want to convey.
Who approved this?
Who looked at this layout and thought it appropriately reflected the sanctity of Auschwitz?
The Holocaust must never become a marketing opportunity. Auschwitz must never become the backdrop for selling comfort, luxury, or convenience.
We owe the six million—and the survivors who still live among us—far better than this.
A Deeply Disturbed Reader
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