Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial & Museum
You will see:
Auschwitz I (about 2h):
The Arbeit Macht Frei gate, the main gate seen by the prisoners barracks (storage, workshops) the gas chamber and crematorium I SS guardhouse and camp director’s office exhibitions showing personal belongings of the prisoners courtyard of the Block 11 and the Death Wall – execution square Block 11- the camp jail – where the first tests of the Zyklon B were arranged the site of the execution of the camp commandant Rudolf HossAuschwitz II – Birkenau, (about 1,5h)
railway entrance gate for trains transporting prisoners to the camp, the ramp, destination for trains carrying people deported to Auschwitz, the ruins of gas chambers and crematoria I and II, the monuments to the victims, located at the end of the railroad platform, between the ruins of the gas chambers, the main camp bathhouse – the Sauna, so called Kanada, the storehouses for loot, the ruins of gas chambers and crematoria IV and V, the barracks
Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial & Museum is the former Nazi concentration and extermination camp. It was intended to carry out Hitler's Endlösung der Judenfrage (Final Solution to the Jewish Question) policy, which entailed the elimination of Jews in Europe by mass murder. It was also a prison for several other nationalities, mainly Poles, but also Roma, Gypsies, Hungarians, Czechs, Ukrainians, and Russians. There were also minorities that were considered inferior and a threat to the purity of the Aryan race and, thus, were supposed to be eliminated. These included homosexuals, the mentally and physically handicapped, communists, and any other groups that were inconvenient to the Nazis and therefore discriminated against in Germany. The camp was also meant to be a prison for Poles who were disobedient, not to mention those who collaborated against the German rule.
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
The Museum was formally founded on July 2nd, 1947. That year, the first exhibition in the barracks opened. In 1979 the remains of the two camps of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau were inscribed on the World Heritage List as evidence of the racist and anti-Semitic ideology, which led to the dehumanization of groups considered inferior and their systematic murder. Birkenau was mostly destroyed by the retreating Germans, but the majority of Auschwitz I has remained intact. The museum exhibition contains original documents, suitcases, shoes, and other belongings of murdered prisoners. Original barracks, fences, fortified walls with barbed wire, wooden watchtowers, and railway ramps have been preserved. The interiors of some of the barracks have been modified to adapt them to commemorative purposes, but the external facades of the buildings have remained unchanged. Because the original evidence has been carefully conserved without any unnecessary restoration, the site has a high level of authenticity. In 2020 a special event took place at the museum - 75th anniversary of Auschwitz Liberation. Today, Auschwitz is the most frequently visited memorial in Poland. In 2019, 2,320,000 people visited the museum.