An Open Letter to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum: Has Auschwitz become just another tourist trap?

Dear Organizers of Auschwitz-Birkenau Tours,

I’m writing to you as someone who, several decades ago, visited Auschwitz for the first time and had an experience that profoundly shaped my understanding of history. I have been back several times since then, but that first visit is what left the deepest impression on me. The silence, the sombre atmosphere, the sheer weight of what had happened … it was a place where time seemed to stand still, where every step was a reminder of the horrors that had unfolded within those walls.

However, when friends from England recently visited us in Kraków and went on a tour of Auschwitz, the stories they came back with paint a very different picture of this monumentally significant place in world history and education.

It seems that Auschwitz-Birkenau has become a victim of its own significance. The crowds are larger, the tours faster, and the space for personal reflection has all but disappeared. What was once a deeply moving and contemplative experience now feels, according to these visitors, like a rushed and overcrowded tour, more focused on keeping up with customer demand than on preserving the true significance of the place. My friends even referred to it as a ‘theme park’. How would the 1.100.000 victims who perished there feel, I wonder, to hear the place of their incarceration, suffering, and ultimate dying, being referred to as a theme park?

I fully understand that Auschwitz-Birkenau holds an essential place in the world’s collective memory, and that it is crucial for as many people as possible to witness it firsthand. But I can’t help but wonder: in the process of accommodating more visitors, has the essence of what makes Auschwitz so impactful been compromised? Are we losing something vital in the attempt to make the site accessible to all?

When I first visited, it wasn’t just the historical facts that struck me—it was the silence, the vastness, the time to think and feel the enormity of what had happened. Back then, still locked in Communist times here in Poland, there were far fewer visitors. There was plenty of time to wander around at your own pace, to walk down echoing corridors, to stop every now and then in order to view the harrowing displays of preserved clothes, shoes, hair accessories, toys, personal items … and the hundreds of black and white photographs of prisoners, all wearing their trademark striped ‘pyjamas’, all with cropped hair, all with a muted expression of apprehension, fear, or plain resignation, captured and framed in their eyes for future generations to behold.

It was about taking your time to stand in a place where so many lives were lost, and letting that reality sink in. That kind of experience is something that can’t be rushed, and it certainly can’t be shared with hundreds of other people all crowding into the same space at the same time: taking hurried snapshots, one tour overlapping another, rushing along from one place to another for fear of losing your tour guide – places where you had hoped to linger and reflect a little longer.

And now? From what my friends recently reported, personal reflection didn’t even come into it. It was more like an enforced sense of: been there, done it, ticked the box.

So, I ask you: Is Auschwitz becoming more of a tourist attraction than a place of deep, personal reflection? Are we prioritising numbers over the quality of the experience? And if so, what does that mean for the way we remember and learn from the past?

These are questions that I hope you, as the organisers and caretakers of this profoundly significant site, will consider carefully. Because while it’s vital that as many people as possible visit Auschwitz, it’s equally important that they leave with more than just personal photos and memories of a crowded day. They should leave with a deep, emotional understanding of what happened there, something that only comes from being able to truly connect with the place – insofar as anyone can truly connect with what happened in a vast concentration camp like Auschwitz-Birkenau, all of eighty years ago. But at least we can try. 

I implore you to reconsider how Auschwitz is managed, ensuring that it remains a place of personal reflection and respect, rather than just another stop on the tourist trail — whether this means putting a limit on the number of tourists allowed per day, extending tour times, or finding other ways to preserve the solemnity and profundity that this museum of global importance demands.

Auschwitz-Birkenau is not just a historical site—it’s a living memorial, a reminder of the darkest chapter in human history. It deserves to be treated with the gravity and honour that it embodies. So perhaps it is finally time to reflect on how we can ensure that every visitor experiences it in the way it was meant to be experienced, as I myself did on that very first visit, even as the world around all of us changes.