Visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau: A Guide for History Travelers in Poland

A personal and practical guide to the Memorial, from booking your visit to fitting it into a longer trip through Poland.

Visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau is not a sightseeing stop, and it should not be planned like one. The former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp lies on the edge of Oświęcim, about 70 km west of Kraków. You may be coming to understand a history you have read about for years, or because someone in your own family passed through its gates. Gay men persecuted under Nazi law were also imprisoned here, and their history is part of the story your guide can tell.

A visit done well is unhurried and led by an educator trained by the Memorial itself. Everything around it, from where you sleep the night before to how you spend the following morning, deserves the same care.

Auschwitz in Brief

Germany opened Auschwitz in occupied Poland in 1940, first as a camp for Polish political prisoners. It grew to include Birkenau, which became the center of the systematic murder of Europe’s Jews. Of at least 1.3 million people deported there, at least 1.1 million were killed, around one million of them Jews. Soviet troops liberated the camp on January 27, 1945, a date now marked as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Visiting With a Family Connection

If a relative was deported to Auschwitz, the visit can be planned around them. The memorial’s online database holds partial records on registered prisoners and deportees, and its Office for Information on Former Prisoners searches the original records on behalf of close relatives. The archives open on weekdays, and family members can arrange to visit before their tour by contacting the memorial in advance.

Only around a tenth of the camp’s documentation survived, so a search may not return a name. It is still worth starting early and bringing any letters or papers your family holds. Your specialist can build an archive appointment into the morning and keep the rest of the day unhurried.

Your Visit to Auschwitz, Step by Step

Admission is free, but every visitor needs a personalized pass booked online at visit.auschwitz.org, and none are sold at the entrance. For most of the day, entry is only possible with a memorial guide-educator, which is the format we recommend. A guided day from Kraków runs like this.

1. Departure from Kraków. A private car covers the 70 km in roughly 75 to 90 minutes. Aim to arrive at least 30 minutes before your tour, and leave larger bags in the car.
2. Auschwitz I. The guided tour of about three and a half hours begins among the original brick barracks. Several blocks hold the permanent exhibition, including rooms of belongings taken from the victims. Photography is not permitted in the room holding victims’ hair in Block 4 or in the basements of Block 11.
3. The shuttle to Birkenau. The Memorial’s free shuttle covers the 3 km between the two sites.
4. Birkenau. Most of this part is outdoors and on foot, following the railway spur and the rows of barracks to the ruins of the gas chambers and crematoria.
5. The return. Your driver waits throughout, so the journey back can be as quiet as you need.

English-language tours run throughout the day in every month, and a six-hour study tour runs daily in English if you want more time. Hours change through the year, so confirm details when you book.

How the Day May Feel

A visit to Auschwitz is emotionally demanding, and there is no correct way to respond to what you see. The Memorial asks for quiet, respectful conduct, but within that, take the time you need. Your guide-educator sets a steady pace, and you can step back from a room if it becomes too much. The Memorial also provides a calming room for visitors who need a pause.

Preparation helps. The Memorial publishes free preparation material in English, and a survivor’s account such as Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man gives the visit a human frame. The next morning, a walk through Kazimierz, the historic center of Jewish life in Kraków, turns the focus to the community that lived there for centuries before the war.

Accommodations We Can Arrange

Birkenau involves more than 2 km of walking on uneven ground, and the historic buildings at Auschwitz I have outdoor steps that cannot take permanent ramps. The Memorial lends wheelchairs and walkers free of charge and has accessible parking and toilets. Some areas, including the tower above the Birkenau gate, remain inaccessible to wheelchair users.

We plan around this with an early tour slot and a private car, and we keep the following day light. If an in-person visit is not practical, the memorial also runs live online guided tours.

Fitting Auschwitz Into a Wider Trip

Kraków is the natural base, and three or four nights there leave room for the Memorial on one day and Kazimierz and Podgórze on another. Warsaw adds the national story with the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews and an old town rebuilt after the war. Our Warsaw, Krakow, and Auschwitz itinerary combines both cities with the Memorial, and Discover Poland takes a wider route through the country.

For a longer journey, Jewish Heritage in Europe moves from Berlin to Prague, Kraków, and Budapest, while the World War II Tour of Europe follows the war from London and Normandy to Berlin and Kraków. Best of Eastern Europe pairs Kraków with Prague and Budapest. Any of these can extend further into Germany, the Czech Republic, or Hungary. If this is your first time in the region, our guide to planning your first trip to Europe covers the groundwork, and our culture vacations show how we build history-led trips elsewhere.

LGBTQ+ History at Auschwitz and Travel in Poland

Men persecuted under Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code, which criminalized sex between men, were among the prisoners here. The Memorial’s surviving records identify at least 77, and research by Rainer Hoffschildt puts the total at a minimum of 136, of whom at least 66 were killed. The Memorial has published a free online lesson and podcast on their history, and you can ask your guide-educator about them on the tour. In Berlin, the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism stands in the Tiergarten.

Same-sex relationships are legal in Poland, but couples cannot marry or register a partnership there, and recognition remains an active political question, so check the current position when you book. Warsaw and Kraków both have visible LGBTQ+ scenes, and at the hotels we book, same-sex couples are welcomed without fuss. Smaller towns are more traditional, and we choose routes and guides with that in mind.

Planning Your Visit with Out of Office

As luxury LGBTQ+ travel specialists, we plan trips like this with an eye for where you will be welcomed as well as what you want to see. Your specialist secures the memorial passes and any archive appointment, then shapes the days around the visit at the pace you prefer. Private groups can travel on a fully private basis, and our senior travel puts ease and comfort first.

Start with our Warsaw, Krakow, and Auschwitz itinerary, or speak to one of our specialists about a route built around the history you most want to understand.