We have booked our families on unique tours all over the world…in search of new experiences, exposure to new cultures, family histories, and more. A Sadness Tour is a new one for us, albeit very relevant during the times of COVID. Ilyse Shapiro of Wynnewood, PA found a need for such a trip which she satisfied with a visit to Chernobyl, Ukraine, and a World War II-themed group tour highlighting concentration camps throughout Germany and Poland. Ever since seeing a story on 60 Minutes over 30 years ago, Ilyse always had a vision of seeing Chernobyl.  She was intrigued by the eerie music the workers listened to and how they could only work for 90 seconds before getting contaminated with radiation. Her self-titled Sadness Tour began with a privately guided tour we arranged of this nuclear disaster site.  She learned that there is still so much radiation coming from the reactor that workers constructed an arch around it then sealed it up.  Afterward, she visited the town of Pripyat, where 45,000+ of Chernobyl’s workers lived.  Today, it is an entire town ensconced by a forest.  She visited the supermarket, movie theatre, school, amusement park, and more to get a sense of how folks lived and used a Geiger counter to test radioactivity.  In some spots, it would be low, but over sewage grates, it was quite high.  A waterfront cafe is expected to reopen in 2022 for the 70,000+ guests who visit the site every year thanks in part to the popularity of the television show of the same name.  Ilyse said that this was an amazing start to her trip – a once-in-a-lifetime experience!  Next up on her tour was a group tour with Globus.  Ilyse had previously been to Terezin outside of Prague and was eager to experience and learn more about the atrocities of the Holocaust.  Fortunately, there were only eight people on this tour (bus tours generally go out with up to 44) with a lot of free time included to explore.  Before the tour started, we arranged a private tour for Ilyse of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Treblinka concentration camp.  The tour group then visited the Auschwitz/Birkenau camps.  It was one of the worst experiences of Ilyse’s life – going from building to building where she saw a display that included two tons of women’s braids and buns, a display of walkers, crutches, and arms, and one with combs and brushes by the thousands.  Afterward were a few days of beauty to balance out the emotional toll.  The tour visited Wroclaw and Krakow in Poland and then onto the war-torn towns of Dresden, Torgau, and Berlin in Germany. Ilyse took advantage of another private tour we arranged in Berlin that examined the city’s Jewish heritage and history.  The group tour continued south to Weimar and Nuremberg.  Each town was quaint with busy squares filled with cafes where the horrors of the past were obscured.  They also visited the Buchenwald camp on a misty gray day which fit the somber mood. Next on to Munich and the Dachau camp where Ilyse learned the difference between a concentration camp and an extermination camp and how the nazis used crystal meth to stay focused and on task.  After a few days of beauty and tranquility in Munich,  it was time to go home.  Ilyse, who has traveled around the world on her own and with her family, is thankful to The Family Traveler for making this unique trip a reality.