The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial comprises two principal sites: Auschwitz I, the main camp, and Auschwitz II-Birkenau. These two historic camps are approximately four kilometres apart and are connected by a free shuttle bus, providing visitors with convenient transport between them.
Visits to the memorial take place as guided tours covering both camps. At Auschwitz I, powerful permanent exhibitions are presented in the former prisoner barracks. The reception building is also located here, where groups and individual visitors begin their tours. At the visitor centre, guests receive audio equipment and are welcomed by experienced guides. Food outlets and retail points, including bookshops and flower shops, can also be found around the reception building. A central car park is located directly in front of the entrance.
A visit traditionally begins at Auschwitz I and continues across the extensive grounds of Auschwitz II-Birkenau. A free bus for individual visitors runs regularly between the car park at the reception building and Birkenau, providing an efficient connection.
Originally established in 1940 as a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners, Auschwitz I is now a place of immense historical importance. The first gas chamber, the crematorium, the camp prison and the notorious Death Wall were located here. The permanent exhibition offers a detailed insight into the history of the camp, the living conditions endured by prisoners and the various stages of the machinery of extermination. Numerous personal belongings discovered after liberation provide a moving impression of the victims’ daily lives.
Block 11 is particularly striking. Preserved largely in its original condition, it once served as the camp prison and contained punishment cells. Saint Maximilian Kolbe, for example, died in the notorious starvation cell. In the courtyard stands the so-called Death Wall, where prisoners were frequently executed by firing squad. This part of the camp also contains the only surviving gas chamber and the crematorium.
The main camp additionally houses national exhibitions. Allow approximately two hours to explore Auschwitz I and engage fully with its exhibitions and grounds.
Approximately four kilometres from the main camp, on the site of the former village of Brzezinka, known in German as Birkenau, lies Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Covering around 140 hectares, it is approximately 50 times larger than the main camp and operated as a concentration and extermination camp between 1942 and 1945. It was here that the systematic mass murder primarily of Jews, as well as people of other nationalities, took place and became inseparably associated with the name Auschwitz-Birkenau.
At the centre of Birkenau was the ramp, a railway siding where prisoner transports arrived and the brutal selection process took place. Only a short distance away, the German Nazis constructed two enormous gas chamber and crematorium complexes in which the bodies were burned, making them a symbol of the mass murder carried out at this site. Although the Germans destroyed these facilities in early 1945, their carefully secured ruins can still be visited today.
Numerous prisoner barracks stood on both sides of the ramp, although many no longer survive. The camp was divided into several sections, including men’s and women’s camps, a family camp for Jews deported from Theresienstadt, the Roma camp, an infirmary and special areas such as the “Canada” warehouses, where property stolen from victims was stored. The so-called “Mexico” camp for Hungarian Jewish women was another section. Electrified barbed-wire fences separated these areas, and the layout can still be traced today.
The watchtower above the entrance gate provides the most comprehensive impression of the camp’s scale and topography, and it is advisable to begin the visit there. The designated route leads from the watchtower through the quarantine barracks on the right, along the ramp and through the women’s camp to the ruins of gas chambers and crematoria II and III and the powerful monument commemorating the camp’s victims.
Allow approximately one and a half hours for a basic visit to Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Visitors wishing to explore additional areas, including the exhibition in the central washhouse, the so-called “Sauna” used to register newly arrived prisoners, the “Canada” area, the ruins of gas chambers and crematoria IV and V, mass graves, the Roma camp and the “Mexico” camp, should allow at least another one and a half hours to understand this significant place more fully.
