The Germans established the camp in 1940 in barracks on the edge of occupied Oświęcim. By 1945 it had grown into a complex of three main parts and dozens of subcamps in which around 1.1 million people were murdered, about a million of them Jews, along with Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and others. It was liberated on 27 January 1945, now International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Auschwitz I
The former barracks with brick blocks, the gate bearing Arbeit macht frei, the death wall and the first gas chamber. The blocks hold permanent exhibitions, including rooms of belongings taken from the deported: hair, suitcases, shoes, prosthetics and cooking pots. This is the part that affects most visitors hardest.
Birkenau
Three kilometres away, Auschwitz II-Birkenau covers 175 hectares, with the gatehouse and the railway running into the centre of the camp, the selection ramp, wooden and brick barracks, and the ruins of four gas chambers and crematoria, blown up by the Germans before evacuation. Scale is the argument here: only walking the whole site conveys what is being described.
Visiting
Entry is free but requires an entry pass booked in advance through the museum website, and in season these run out a week ahead. During peak hours entry is only possible with an educator; a guided visit to both parts takes 3.5 hours. A free shuttle connects Auschwitz I and Birkenau.
Rules
The museum asks for dress and behaviour appropriate to a memorial. Large bags are not admitted, photography is prohibited in the room with victims' hair and in the cellars of Block 11, and posing for photographs on the railway tracks or at the gate is plainly out of place — the museum has said so publicly more than once. Children under fourteen are not recommended.
Other sites
Majdanek near Lublin is the most intact of the camps, because the Germans had no time to erase it. Treblinka, Sobibór and Bełżec were extermination camps of Operation Reinhard, dismantled completely; today they are symbolic memorials in forest and read entirely differently.
Practicalities
Oświęcim is 70 km from Kraków, an hour by bus or train. Many agencies sell day trips combining the site with the Wieliczka salt mine; combining the two in one day is widely criticised and worth thinking about.