News

Almost a Million People Visited the Site of the Auschwitz Nazi Camp in 2005

Almost a million people visited the grounds, buildings, and exhibitions of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in 2005. Attendance had fluctuated between 500-700 thousand annually in the previous few years. The number of visitors in 2005 was the highest since 1972.

“Admission to the Museum is free. The only people registered are those who make use of the information points or who tour the Museum with a guide. In 2005, 760,108 people from 106 countries were registered,” said Andrzej Kacorzyk, director of the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust. “It is estimated, however, that the number of people who arrived is at least 20% higher then the statistics indicate. This would mean that a total of about one million people visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in 2005.

“The 60th anniversary of the liberation of the camp, which had a high media profile in Poland and other countries, undoubtedly influenced this rise in the number of visitors to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum last year,” said Kacorzyk. “The growth of low-cost carriers flying to Poland and the general rise in interest in our country on the part of foreign tourists must also have played a role. Nor can the increasing activity by teachers be overlooked.”

The creation in 2005 of the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust (ICEAH) at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, involving the continual broadening of the educational offerings addressed to various target groups, highlights the great significance of education.

Museum Deputy Director for Education Krystyna Oleksy stressed that “markedly more individuals and groups are staying at the Memorial for several days in order to take advantage of the new possibilities for deeper encounters with history. They listen to lectures on selected subjects connected with the history of Auschwitz, attend showings of documentary films, join workshops on the so-called national exhibitions, and familiarize themselves with the archives, preservation studios, and Museum collections department. There is great interest in meetings with former prisoners and people who lived near the camp during World War II. Museum staff members and invited guests conducted almost 400 lectures and educational activities of various kinds in 2005.”

Poles remained the largest group of visitors (270,500, up about 70,000 on the previous year). The next largest contingents of visitors were citizens of the USA (75,146), the UK (45,292), Germany (44,817), Israel (43,020), Italy (42,466), France (34,375), South Korea (24,131), Norway (22,505), Spain (19,572), and the Czech Republic (15,852). The majority of visitors were young people (421,718), of whom over half were Polish students from intermediate and secondary schools.

Visitors to Auschwitz Site 2001-2005*

Year - Number of visitors

• 2001 - 403 700
• 2002 - 444 400
• 2003 - 474 400
• 2004 - 573 600
• 2005 - 760 100

*includes only visitors noted by the Visitor Services Section—mostly people who visited the Museum grounds with a guide; the actual numbers of annual visitors are about 20-30% higher).