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Hi, I’m Mary,
I'm a professional tour guide specialising in history of ideologies and XIX/XX century Europe and political science.
I have lived in Berlin for 4 years now, gaining first tour guiding experience working for the commercial market leader.
I grew up in Warsaw where my Jewish/Polish roots and family’s experience pointed me towards a keen interest in European history.
I studied on Warsaw University's Collegium MISH, which allows students with broad academic interests to combine classes from all faculties into individual, interdisciplinary program.
I was fortunate to learn from some of the best contemporary historians, sociologists and others - this gave me very high level of understanding of modern history and strong ability to analyse its outcomes.
Later, working as a journalist fixer, I was able to exchange experience with journalists from all around the world and many cultural contexts, and practice explaining complex socio-historical subjects in a approachable but thorough way.
In the world experiencing so much political tension, I decided to dedicate my life to passing on as much of this knowledge as possible.
Now I offer my independent tours trying to counter the current trend of maximising profit by sacrificing historical accuracy. After deregulation of the profession it became the norm to advertise problematic or even misleading narratives as representing the highest academic quality. It is easy to exploit the fact that guests, who almost never are trained historians, simply "don't know what they don't know".
My goal is to combine my education, professional and family backgrounds to deliver understandable explanation of even most complex processes and phenomena that shaped Germany and the world as it is today.
I hope you will join me and haven not only entertaining, but truly valuable experience on my tour.
I feel incredibly lucky to be one of first guests on this wonderful tour. Magda has extensive knowledge and a degree on the subject, her English is excellent and easy to understand. The tour is very thoroughly researched and visibly took many months of preparation, the photos and materials she prepared are diverse and really unique. The true highlight (and something incredibly rare) is guides connection to the subject. Her family was one of very few who decided to save a Jewish person, there are only 7k polish Righteous Among the Nations. It felt like a real privilege to be guided through the getto by someone so personally connected and truly caring about this place and part of history. I don’t live in Poland any more, but I’m polish/jewish, visiting Warsaw I saw all available Jewish history tours and I so far I was horrified each time. Guides had very limited knowledge or even interest in the subject and skipped difficult subjects like current polish antisemitism or manipulated important narratives. Each time it felt completely artificial and I asked if they even know one Jewish person in Warsaw - never got confirming response. There are so few Jews in Poland right now and so hard to hear an authentic voice. You won’t find a better tour about Jewish history in Warsaw than this one.
Horrible experience. I took this tour 1y ago. For me, being Polish-Jewish, the tour is antisemitic and spreads misconceptions. The guide Andrzej couldn’t answer questions and was giving wrong data. He was trying very hard to make many jokes, not on the subject and completely distasteful. I payed for the tour and at the end and gave the guide Andrzej a lot of sources and advice how to improve. I left no review. Today I took the tour again and close to nothing changed. The guide this time added 2 sentences about polish antisemitism, still with wrong data, poor sense of humor, refusing to answer simple questions for example about historical reasons for antisemitism in Poland. He directly refused to share his sources when I asked what literature is he using. The guide has no connection on this subject, it’s just a source of income for him, because there’s a huge demand for teaching about Jews in Poland and almost no Jewish people around to reclaim their voice.
It was a really great experience and Nana is a lovely person. As a guide myself I really appreciated that she didn’t adjust her content to please foreigners but painted honest and nuanced picture of history and culture of Vietnam. I’ve found it really interesting to hear about communism from a different than tired and often one sided european/US perspective. Nana had an injutry last year and has a bit of difficulty with walking but she was still very professional, skilled and we moved around with no issue. I think the fact she’s still guiding after her accident only shows how she cares about and loves her job and her city. Apart from monumentu and a local museum we had some snacks and drinks and saw couple hidden corners and local communities. We had some delay but a good, authentic walking tour can’t be 100% precisely scheduled and I appreciate Nana had a lot of time for us. At the end we also recieved some great recommendations. I can recommend this tour 100%! Happy new year and all the best to you Nana:)