Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum
Memorial and museum on the site of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp.
The memorial covers the preserved grounds of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp operated in occupied Poland between 1940 and 1945. More than 1.1 million people were murdered here, the great majority of them Jews deported from across Europe, together with Poles, Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war and others. The Polish parliament established the State Museum in 1947, two years after the camp was liberated by Soviet troops.
Auschwitz I retains its brick blocks, the gate bearing the words Arbeit macht frei, and exhibitions housed in the former barracks, including national exhibitions prepared by individual countries. Three kilometres away, Birkenau preserves the brick gatehouse, the railway ramp, wooden barracks and the ruins of the gas chambers and crematoria. UNESCO inscribed the site on the World Heritage List in 1979. Visitors are asked to behave with the dignity appropriate to a place of remembrance.
Highlights
- Preserved grounds of both Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau
- National exhibitions installed in the former brick blocks
- The Birkenau railway ramp and the ruins of the crematoria
- Inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1979
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