Screening of the Film “Liberation of Auschwitz”
Begin your museum visit with a moving experience. In the cinema at the reception building, you can watch a 20-minute documentary entitled “Liberation of Auschwitz”. This unique film was made immediately after the Red Army liberated the camp in January 1945 and is available in several languages. Please note that admission to the screening is subject to a fee. To see the film, mention it when reserving your museum guide or ask directly at the museum entrance.
Workshops and Lectures at the Auschwitz Museum
Enhance your museum experience with engaging workshops and lectures carefully prepared by the museum’s educational staff. They provide in-depth insight into a wide range of subjects, including:
Archive Research
The memorial archive provides access to extensive collections, ranging from prisoner registration forms, labour assignment records, death registers and punishment reports to personnel files of SS members. Letters sent from and to Auschwitz and documents concerning children in the camp offer many different perspectives. Original Nazi documents help visitors understand the camp’s operation from the perpetrators’ perspective. The collection also includes accounts by former prisoners.
Art Collection
The memorial’s art collection includes both officially permitted and prohibited artworks created in the camp, as well as works by survivors. This unique collection tells the story in a powerful artistic form.
Tour of the Town of Oświęcim
Discover the living town of Oświęcim, once home to a significant Jewish community. Before the war, almost 60% of its residents were Jewish. Learn about the Nazi plans to establish a model town here for ethnic Germans from the Baltic region; some of the buildings are still visible today. Explore the history of IG Farben, which constructed an enormous chemical plant on the outskirts of the town and used prisoners from Auschwitz III as forced labour. Oświęcim is not only a place of remembrance but also a living town offering insight into contemporary Poland.
Visit to the Marian Kołodziej Exhibition
Encounter the moving art of Marian Kołodziej, a Polish painter and stage designer who, as prisoner number 432, spent four years at Auschwitz I from the camp’s earliest days. His works reflect survival, deportation, despair and the incomprehensible reality of that period. After 50 years of silence, he found renewed strength in the 1990s through the words of the poet Herbert: “You survived not in order to live. You have little time; you must bear witness.” His pictures, known as “memory plates”, guide viewers through a labyrinth of recollections and experiences.
Meetings with Witnesses to History
Witnesses to the camp’s history, including former Auschwitz prisoners, still live in the Krakow region. In exceptional circumstances, meetings with these remarkable people can be arranged, subject to their health. Meetings may also be possible with so-called “Children of the Holocaust” – people who survived the Krakow Ghetto and the German occupation as Jewish children. Another special group comprises people who risked their lives to save Jews from extermination and were honoured by the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem as “Righteous Among the Nations”.
Booking Workshops and Lectures
To book a workshop or lecture, please contact our office. We will be pleased to help you create an individual and enriching programme.
