Krakow Travel Guide

Auschwitz Memorial Museum

The Auschwitz concentration camp is actually made up of three camps - Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau and Auschwitz III. Together the complex forms the largest cemetery in the world, preserved as a sombre memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, and commemorating the hundreds of thousands of people exterminated there by the Nazis during the Second World War. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum was established in 1947 and visitors have access to both camps and can wander freely around the structures, ruins and gas chambers, and visit the exhibits displayed in the surviving prison blocks at Auschwitz I. The hushed atmosphere is one of shock and revulsion from the moment visitors enter the barbed-wire compound through the iron gate, ironically inscribed with the words 'Arbeit Macht Frei' (Work Makes Free). The buildings contain displays of photographs and horrific piles of personal articles of the victims, including battered suitcases, and thousands of spectacles, hair and shoes collect
Address: Ul. Wiezniow Oswiecimia 20
Website: www.auschwitz.org.pl
Email: muzeum@auschwitz.org.pl
Telephone: +48 (0)33 843 2
Transportation: There are regular coach and rail services from Krakow (a one hour journey), and a shuttle bus runs between Auschwitz I and Birkenau from mid-April to October
Opening Time: Daily from 8am to 3pm (December to February); from 8am to 4pm (March and November); from 8am to 5pm (April and October); from 8am to 6pm (May and September); and from 8am to 7pm (June, July and August)
Admission: Free. Documentary film is 2 zlotys