Main Exhibition Part II - Auschwitz II – Birkenau

The camp Auschwitz II – Birkenau was established around 4 kilometres away from Auschwitz I Stammlager, on the site of an evacuated village, Brzezinka (Ger. Birkenau), which gave its name to the camp. Birkenau occupied an area of 140 hectares, and as such was around 50 times larger than Auschwitz I – Stammlager. It operated in the years 1942-1945 and functioned as both a concentration camp and a death camp. It was here that the process of mass extermination of the Jews with which the name of Auschwitz is usually associated took place.

Deep inside the camp, in its central part, was the ramp, the railway siding where the transports of prisoners pulled in and where the selection of prisoners took place. Slightly further along, at the end of the ramp to the left and right, the Nazis built two huge gas chambers, and crematoria for burning the bodies, so adapting Birkenau to the purpose of mass extermination. The gas chambers and crematoria were blown up by the Germans at the beginning of 1945 as the Red Army advanced. They remain today in their ruined state, though stabilised and secured. 
To the right and left of the ramp lie the fields of prisoners’ barracks, most of which have not survived to our times. The camp was divided into sub-camps, including the men’s camp, the women’s camp, the family camp for Jews from Theresienstadt, the gypsy camp, the hospital section, the area where the warehouses stood that were used to store the personal artefacts looted from the victims, known as “Canada”, and the sub-camp for female Jews from Hungary, known as “Mexico”. These sub-camps were separated from each other by barbed-wire electric fences. The structure of the camp as divided into the sub-camps remains legible today. 
The best way of gaining an idea of the size of the camp and its layout is to climb up to the guard tower above the entrance gate; this is the best starting point for your visit to Birkenau. The route of the tour leads from this guard tower via the “quarantine barracks” to the right, on past the ramp in the central area of the camp and through the barracks of the women’s camp on the left, to the ruins of gas chambers 2 and 3, and the memorial to the victims of the camp.
A basic tour of Auschwitz II – Birkenau taking in these points will last around an hour and a half.

"Sauna", "Canada" and "Mexico"

 A more extensive tour will include other parts of the camp, such as the exhibition in the central bathhouse, known as the “Sauna”, showing the process by which new prisoners were received into the camp; “Canada”, the area set aside for storing and sorting the personal artefacs of the prisoners brought into the camp; the ruins of gas chambers and crematoria 4 and 5; the mass graves of camp victims; the gypsy camp; and “Mexico”. For this extended version you will need to allow at least another hour and a half.

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