News
Record Number of Visitors to the Auschwitz Museum in 2010
In 2010, there were 1,380,000 visitors to the grounds of the former German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp Auschwitz. This is a record figure in the more than sixty years of the Memorial, which is the most visited site of its kind in the world and the most visited museum in Poland. The constantly rising attendance reflects the significance of this place as a symbol for the world.
The top ten countries of origin for visitors were Poland (530 thousand), the United Kingdom (84 thousand), Italy (74 thousand), Germany (68 thousand), France (63 thousand), Israel (59 thousand), South Korea (47 thousand), the Czech Republic (45 thousand), Slovakia (43 thousand), and Norway (43 thousand). Most importantly, the majority of the visitors to the Memorial—850 thousand—were young people, school pupils, and university students.
"Neither the closing of airspace after the eruption of the Icelandic volcano nor the May floods in Poland had any significant impact on the number of visitors," says Andrzej Kacorzyk, head of the Visitor Service Section. "A noteworthy fact is the arrival of ever increasing numbers of Europeans and visitors from the Far East. Last year, there were more visitors to the Memorial from South Korea than from the United States."
Year by year the number of people shown around the grounds of the Memorial by specially prepared and trained guides is increasing. In 2010 more than a million persons took guided tours in the eighteen languages spoken by the more than 260 guides. There is also a rise in the number of people taking part in specialist educational programs conducted by the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust as part of projects targeting teachers, students, community activists, and various occupational groups. There were more than seven thousand participants in in-depth educational projects this year.
"In view of the enormous interest on the part of individual visitors, a new option was added in which they tour the Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau grounds in organized groups with a guide," observes Magdalena Urbaniak of the Visitor Service Section. "The positive response to the new method of encountering the history of Auschwitz has led us to continue offering this option over the winter with guides in Polish, English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish," Urbaniak adds.
The frequency of service by the free shuttle buses between Auschwitz and Birkenau was doubled in order to make it easier for visitors to see both parts of the Museum. The Pixel company of Bydgoszcz donated a lighted information panel for one of the Museum buses.
