News
Auschwitz Memorial visited by 1.33 million people in 2013
1.33 m people from all over the world visited the Auschwitz Memorial in 2013. A high turnout from previous years has been maintained. The majority of visitors consist of young people arriving mostly as part of various educational programmes.
Within the top ten countries from which our visitors come are: Poland (336 thousand visitors), Great Britain (178 thousand), USA (101 thousand), Italy (71 thousand) as well as Germany (69 thousand), Israel (57 thousand), Spain (52 thousand) France (45 thousand), South Korea (45 thousand) and the Czech Republic (41 thousand).
Nearly 300 licensed educators from the Museum have given guided tours in 19 languages to 1 224 000 people (84 per cent of all the visitors). This constitutes a 12 per cent growth in the number of visitors compared to 2012.
“We are trying to provide a guided tours of the Auschwitz Memorial for as many people as possible,” explains Andrzej Kacorzyk, director of the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust. “It is very important to learn about the history of this unique place, so strongly marked by the emotions, through the contact with a specially qualified educator and not by means of automatic guide systems,” emphasises Kacorzyk.
The number of people visiting the Auschwitz Memorial individually, who decide to join groups specially organised for them, increases as well. In 2013, this number reached 345 thousand, which is a 32 per cent raise in comparison to 2012. Each visit guided by an educator includes both parts of the former concentration camp: Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II—Birkenau.
“The number of visitors from Ireland has grown considerably (by 106 per cent)," remarks Magdalena Luranc, Head of the Visitors Service section. “The same or even slightly higher growth has been also noted among the visitors from Israel, Norway, Sweden, Great Britain and USA. However, last year’s lower attendance of Polish school groups hasn’t changed,” says Magdalena Luranc.
The said lower number of school groups is the reason of a considerable drop in the amount of Polish visitors during the last few years (2011 – 610 thousand, 2012 – 446 thousand, 2013 – 336 thousand). Even if influenced, among others, by demographic factors, it is mainly associated with the change in the core curriculum for history teaching at schools and the removal of subjects considering World War Two from the secondary school curriculum. So far, the attempts to create a common funding programme financing school trips to such an authentic Memorial have been unsuccessful.
