4.6013985 from partner siteStart your experience with a pickup from your hotel at your preferred departure time. Then, settle into your private car with your driver and travel direct to Auschwitz-Birkenau, outside the town of Oświęcim, without any stops to pick up other passengers.
After roughly 1.5 hours, arrive at the visitor center. Here, take your leave of your private driver and set off on a guided group tour of the UNESCO-listed site.
Enter the gates of the compound under the chilling inscription of ‘Arbeit macht frei’ or ‘work sets one free,’ and learn how the Nazi concentration camp was founded in 1940 as a detention camp for Polish prisoners before becoming an extermination center for the Jews of Europe and other ‘anti-social’ groups.
Discover how this change saw Auschwitz extended to include neighboring Birkenau, creating a camp that was to claim the lives of an estimated 1.1 million people. Explore the key buildings — some still intact and some in ruins — and see the exhibitions that chart the fates of many of those imprisoned here.
View the crematoriums and gas chambers, and gaze at Birkenau’s watchtowers and barracks as you hear how the camp was run and guarded. While the facts of what happened here are distressing, your guide will explain everything in a sensitive and considered way.
Break from your explorations to visit the memorial to the camp’s victims, and spend a few moments in memory of those who were detained here not so long ago.
During your tour, there will be a brief break for lunch. There are no eating facilities at Auschwitz-Birkenau, so please bring your own refreshments on the day.
Afterward, leave your group and meet back up with your driver and car. Then, travel directly back to your Krakow hotel, where your tour concludes.