News

Museum appeals to visitors to be cautious about external tour offers

We remind visitors that the Auschwitz Museum is closed to the public on 25 December and 1 January. We also appeal to all visitors to exercise caution regarding external tour offers.

Due to very high visitor numbers, we encourage everyone planning a visit to make a reservation in advance via the Museum’s official website: visit.auschwitz.org. This is the only authorized system for reserving entry passes to visit the former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz.

Both organized groups and individual visitors may book guided tours up to three months in advance. A limited number of entry passes for guided visits for individual visitors are available daily at the Visitor Service Center; however, advance booking guarantees entry at the planned time.

We also remind visitors that free entry passes for unguided visits are available exclusively through visit.auschwitz.org. Reservations for these passes can be made from 90 to 7 days before the planned visit.

“This solution has made it possible to completely eliminate queues of visitors brought by various tour companies from Kraków. Unfortunately, we are also observing new and troubling practices by certain ‘intermediaries’ that mislead visitors,” said Andrzej Kacorzyk, Deputy Director of the Museum.

Such practices include, in particular: attempts to impersonate the Museum’s official website; blaming the Museum for the failure to provide a service when the tour company never received reservation confirmation from the Museum; and sending customers messages shortly before arrival claiming that visits have been canceled due to, for example, official visits or commemorative ceremonies, which is untrue.

“In practice, people using such offers are brought to the Museum very early in the morning and then directed to queue for guided-tour entry passes, without any guarantee of obtaining them, or of the tour time and language. Unfortunately, it also happens that visitors purchase entry passes for tours conducted in a language they do not understand, while those who brought them to the Museum falsely inform them that they will be able to join another group during the visit,” added Andrzej Kacorzyk.

Joining another group is not permitted. For safety reasons, such attempts may result in intervention by Museum security and the immediate termination of the visit.

We strongly urge all visitors to use only the official reservation system visit.auschwitz.org and to be cautious about external tour offers. The Museum does not cooperate with any external entities in this regard and bears no responsibility for canceled or invalid reservations made through other websites.