The end of the practice of “night trips” to Auschwitz. The museum attacks unfair carriers

From March 1, booking entry passes for individual visitors will be possible only through the official Auschwitz Museum system on the Internet, said Paweł Sawicki from the facility's press office. This is, among other things, to eliminate queues at service points.

Last year, the memorial site housing the former German Auschwitz camp was visited by 1.95 million people.

According to Andrzej Kacorzyk, deputy director of the museum, the new solution is primarily a reaction to “unethical actions of some carriers”. They sold visitors trips to the museum with transfer from Krakow. Almost at the last moment, customers were informed that due to problems with the reservation, the departure time was changed to very early morning or even night hours. They blamed the alleged difficulties on the museum, which was untrue.

Visitors, who were often brought to the closed entrance to the memorial site at 3-4 a.m., had to queue up for an entry card at the museum's service point.

The facility's spokesman, Bartosz Bartyzel, said that if the cards were still available, they would visitors often had to wait several hours for the tour to begin. – We have also recorded scandalous cases of conflicts between group “guardians” for places in the queue, which ended with the intervention of museum guards and the police. Thanks to the changes being introduced, such things will no longer happen. Visitors will be able to plan their visits in advance and choose the most convenient method of arrival, he said.

Paweł Sawicki explained that the introduced change means that entry cards will not be available in front of the main entrance to the museum. – In the visit.auschwitz.org system, both organized groups and individual visitors can book them up to three months in advance – he said.

Free entry cards – as before – can be booked up to seven days before the planned visit. Cards for guided tours will be available while they last. Deputy director Kacorzyk explained that this means that even at the last minute it will be possible to check whether there are still vacancies and book them.

The Germans established the Auschwitz camp in 1940 to imprison Poles. Auschwitz II-Birkenau was established two years later. It became the site of the extermination of Jews. There was a network of sub-camps in the camp complex. In Auschwitz, the Germans killed at least 1.1 million people, mostly Jews. Out of approximately 140-150 thousand Almost half of the Poles deported to the camp died. Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and people of other nationalities also died in Auschwitz.

In 1947, a museum was established on the site of the former Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau camps. In 1979, the former camp was included as the only facility of this type on the UNESCO World Heritage List. (PAP)

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