Few places in the world demand as much of a visitor as Auschwitz. Located in the town of Oświęcim, roughly 70 kilometres west of Kraków, this is the site of the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp complex ever built — and today it stands as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a memorial to more than a million lives lost. Before the war, Oświęcim was a quiet Polish town where Jews made up more than half the population of around 10,000. That history matters. It is the reason coming here feels like more than sightseeing.
What to See in Auschwitz
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum encompasses both Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, with over 150 original buildings preserved across the site. As a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is the principal institution responsible for the memorial and the vast archive of evidence held here. Any serious visit to Oświęcim begins and ends with it.
Auschwitz I Concentration Camp
Established in 1940 as the administrative centre of the complex, Auschwitz I preserves the barracks, the exhibitions of prisoners' belongings — shoes, suitcases, spectacles — and the notorious Block 11, known as the death block. The sheer volume of personal objects on display is what hits hardest. Nothing prepares you for it.
Main Gate of Auschwitz I
The camp's entrance gate bears the inscription "Arbeit macht frei" — "Work sets you free" — one of the most chilling examples of Nazi deception. It marks the starting point of the memorial visit and has become one of the most recognised and disturbing images associated with the Holocaust. Stand here long enough and the weight of it settles in.
Auschwitz II-Birkenau Concentration Camp
Built in 1941, Birkenau was the largest Nazi extermination camp and the principal site of the Final Solution. Original barracks survive alongside the remains of gas chambers and crematoria. The railway tracks along which deportees arrived stretch deep into the camp — a detail that, seen in person, makes the scale of the atrocity impossible to abstract.
Birkenau Watchtower
From this guard tower, Nazi sentries monitored prisoners across the camp. Climbing it today offers a panoramic view over the entire complex — fields of barracks, the train tracks, the remnants of the gas chambers in the distance. It is a sobering perspective on just how vast, and how deliberate, this place was.
International Monument at Birkenau
Erected in 1967 at the far end of the main axis of Birkenau, this memorial features stone blocks with inscriptions in dozens of languages honouring the victims of the Holocaust. It is the site's formal place of remembrance — quiet, severe, and appropriately unadorned. Many visitors end their time here in silence.
Oświęcim Synagogue
Before the German occupation, Oświęcim had a thriving Jewish community. This historic synagogue is part of what remains of that heritage. Visiting it alongside the camp memorial gives a fuller picture of the town's pre-war identity — a community that existed here long before the world reduced this place to a single, terrible name.
Oświęcim Castle
Standing in the old town centre beside the river, Oświęcim Castle is a reminder that this was a functioning Polish town centuries before the war. Part of the city's architectural heritage, it sits quietly alongside the river — a fragment of ordinary civic life that the town has been working to reclaim since 1945.
Audio Guide for Auschwitz with Guipock
Visiting a site of this gravity is different from exploring a cathedral or a Roman forum. There is context you need — and gaps in that context change what you see. The Auschwitz audio guide on Guipock is built with that in mind: measured, factual, and paced to the way people actually walk through a memorial rather than a museum.
The audio is produced using high-quality generated audio available in multiple languages and regional accents — British English, American English, Australian English, French, German, Polish, Spanish, and more. You are not reliant on a hired group tour or a printed leaflet. You move at your own pace, stop when you need to, and come back to a section if it did not sink in the first time.
Navigation works through a GPS-guided map: as you approach each point of interest, Guipock alerts you so you can open the audio guide for that spot. You choose when to listen. At a site like this, that matters — some visitors need a moment before they are ready to take anything else in.
Before you travel, use the offline download feature to save the entire Auschwitz guide to your device. Mobile signal inside the memorial can be patchy, and the last thing you want is a buffering screen when you are standing in front of Block 11. Download it the evening before and the app runs entirely without mobile data.
Travelling as a family, or in a group where not everyone shares a language? The family code feature means a single purchase covers everyone: each person uses the app on their own phone, in their own preferred language. No passing a device around, no one missing the explanation because they could not hear. And for younger visitors, the children's mode offers the same visit with language and content adapted for a younger audience — age-appropriate, shorter in duration, and thoughtfully handled given the nature of the subject matter.
The app audio guide Auschwitz is available to download before you leave home. Given how much ground there is to cover across both Auschwitz I and Birkenau, having the full context before you arrive — rather than piecing it together on the day — makes for a considerably more considered visit.
