When I visited Auschwitz, I didn’t know about the unofficial rules for visiting Auschwitz. Of course, I knew about the official rules, but I hadn’t given much through to what other behaviours I should avoid, because I was in too much of a sombre mood to really think about anything.
Walking around the former death camp, surrounded by the ghosts of those who perished there, I barely even spoke to the friend that I was with. The two of us walked around Auschwitz and Birkenau in near silence, partly because we weren’t really in the mood for conversation, and partly out of respect for those who lost their lives in this godforsaken place.
However, while most people abided by the unwritten Auschwitz rule that one should be respectful and sensitive when visiting Auschwitz, there were exceptions, and their number wasn’t insignificant.
While I was visiting Auschwitz, I witnessed people laughing and joking, taking selfies, play-fighting and posing for photographs in front of the ovens where countless people’s bodies were incinerated.
One man walked out of the crematorium crying as his wife comforted him, all the while surrounded by groups of oblivious teenagers who continued to crack jokes.
Unfortunately, for some, the need to visit Auschwitz and pay one’s respects has become overshadowed by the feeling that Auschwitz is some sort of tourist attraction.
Tour companies in Kraków bring busloads of young tourists to Auschwitz and Birkenau each day and now, rather than going to Kraków with the purpose of visiting Auschwitz and educating oneself about the horrors that occurred there, visiting Auschwitz has now become just another ‘thing to do’ in Kraków.
Young lads that have flocked to Kraków for the cheap booze and beautiful women find themselves heading to Auschwitz to “get a bit of culture” before the drinking commences.
I personally had the misfortune of talking to a group of young Canadian men who had been kicked off the bus on the way to visit Auschwitz because they were drinking.
Yes. You read that right. They were pre-gaming on their way to a concentration camp.
Unfortunately, Auschwitz and Birkenau are not unique when it comes to this type of behaviour. I’ve witnessed the same at the Berlin Holocaust Memorial (where for some reason, people simply cannot resist taking selfies), the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and the Killing Fields in Cambodia.
It boggles my mind that people would visit Auschwitz for some kind of fun day out, and I cannot comprehend the mentality of people who think that taking a f*cking SELFIE at a concentration camp is okay, but apparently these things need to be spelt out to people, and so here I am to do just that.
Read on to discover both the official rules for visiting Auschwitz, as well as the unofficial Auschwitz rules.
The Official Rules for Visiting Auschwitz
The official rules for visiting Auschwitz are pretty much common sense. For example, don’t bring any weapons into Auschwitz.
The official Auschwitz rules laid out by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and Memorial itself are the following:
- Don’t move, remove or damage anything at Auschwitz-Birkenau
- Behave with the ‘appropriate solemnity and respect’ and dress ‘appropriately’ (I will delve into this more later)
- The maximum size of bags and backpacks allowed to carry on the Museum grounds is 30 x 20 x 10 cm
- Don’t consume food, alcohol or cigarettes
- Don’t enter with animals (apart from guide dogs)
- Don’t enter with any vehicles (aside from prams and wheelchairs)
- Don’t enter with flags, posters, banners or other promotional items
- Don’t possess any weapons
- Don’t play music
- Don’t use mobile phones inside the exhibition buildings
- Don’t enter under the influence of alcohol
- Don’t use a drone
- Don’t use flash photography or tripods inside the buildings
As you can see, most of these Auschwitz rules are obvious – most people wouldn’t think to start playing music or visit Auschwitz while drunk – but some of them are less obvious, like the maximum bag size for example.
However, while the rules listed above are the only official rules for visiting Auschwitz, there are definitely some unofficial Auschwitz rules, or etiquette.
Here are some unofficial rules for visiting Auschwitz.
The Unofficial Rules for Visiting Auschwitz
1. Don’t Complain
Visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau takes a full day.
Your feet will hurt. You might get cold. Maybe you’re hungry and can’t wait to get back to your hostel for a hot meal.
Well guess what?
The prisoners of Auschwitz were also cold, hungry and in pain, and I’m willing to bet that they felt it a lot more acutely than you!
Don’t whine about your minor discomforts when walking on the very soil that so many people really suffered on.
If anything, you should be counting your blessings while walking around Auschwitz, not moaning about minor aches and pains.
2. Don’t see Auschwitz-Birkenau as a tourist attraction
Yes, you are a tourist. Yes, you are visiting Auschwitz. But no, Auschwitz is not a tourist destination.
It is important to visit Auschwitz for the right reasons. I genuinely believe that we have a duty to visit sites such as Auschwitz in order to educate ourselves about what we, as humans, have done to our fellow humans.
However, there are also some very wrong reasons to visit Auschwitz, and we should be mindful of why we are choosing to visit a sight of mass suffering.
Unsure what the right and wrong reasons are?
Here’s a guide:
Are you visiting because you want to educate yourself and pay your respects to the people who perished at Auschwitz? If so, you’re visiting for the right reasons!
Are you visiting because you heard it was a “must-see,” you want to take some Insta-worthy shots with deep and meaningful captions, and you feel like you need to tick it off your Krakow bucket list along with the salt mines and pierogi? Yeah, don’t bother.
3. Taking Pictures at Auschwitz
Are you allowed to take photos at Auschwitz?
Yes, for the most part.
There are a couple of places where flash photography is not permitted as it damages the exhibition (but yet still people choose to flout this rule and destroy history at the same time), but on the whole, photography is okay.
HOWEVER.
Although you can take all the photographs you want at Auschwitz, just because you could, doesn’t always mean you should.
I personally took some photographs at Sachsenhausen and the Killing Fields. I didn’t want them for social media, and the pictures didn’t have me in them. They were just pictures of the things that personally affected me on my visits. Some people choose not to take any photographs at all because they don’t feel comfortable. And that’s okay too.
Sometimes, you have to judge for yourself what is appropriate and what is not, and some things are just objectively in bad taste.
For example, it is never appropriate to take a selfie at Auschwitz, and honestly the concept of wanting to be IN the photograph at all is very odd to me.
I understand that people may want to take photographs of things such as the Arbeit macht frei sign, but to actually pose in front of the train tracks or the barracks? That is very odd to me. Where will you put the picture? Instagram? Tinder?!
On my visit to Sachsenhausen, I actually saw a middle-aged couple posing in front of the ovens that were used to burn the bodies of countless innocent people. Why? Will they frame the picture and hang it on their bedroom wall?
That type of behaviour is incomprehensible to me.
4. Dress Appropriately
In the official rules for visiting Auschwitz, the Auschwitz memorial centre state that you should ‘dress appropriately,’ but what does that mean?
What do you wear to Auschwitz?
Would you believe me if I told you that some people walk boldly around concentration camps wearing t-shirts sporting band names such as Megadeth or Slayer?
Megadeth might be your favourite band in the world (I own both Megadeth and Slayer t-shirts myself), but maybe, just maybe it isn’t appropriate to be branding yourself with words like that when you are walking around a literal death camp.
I’m not saying that you have to dress the same way you would for a funeral, but just use your brain and realise that your neon yellow Full Moon Party singlet may not be the best choice of attire for visiting Auschwitz.
Just don’t wear anything too revealing, anything offensive or anything tone deaf, and you should be fine.
5. Don’t Laugh and Joke
Who are I, the fun police?
Well, actually yes.
I don’t care if your friend just made the funniest joke in the world about something completely unrelated to Auschwitz: it isn’t appropriate to laugh.
Auschwitz is a place for quiet reflection, not for comedy.
Even if you personally don’t feel affected by the things that you see when you visit Auschwitz, just remember that other people are affected, and if somebody who has lost family members in the gas chambers sees you and your mates cracking jokes, they may feel very upset.
Rules for Visiting Auschwitz | Final Thoughts
And there we have it – the official and unofficial rules for visiting Auschwitz.
I strongly believe that visitors to Poland owe it to themselves and to the victims of Hitler’s regime to visit Auschwitz and Birkenau. We cannot erase history, and we shouldn’t want to. We should want to pay our respects and educate ourselves about what our fellow humans have done before us.
If you can follow my guidelines on how to behave while you are walking around Auschwitz, Birkenau and other sights of mass tragedy, I implore you to go and visit them and learn about the atrocities committed not that long ago.
You can buy your tickets here.
However, if you want to walk around in a Megadeth t-shirt laughing, joking and taking selfies then perhaps skip the day trip to Auschwitz and visit a beer garden instead.
Do you agree with me? How do you feel about taking photographs at Auschwitz? Can it be done tastefully or is it never appropriate? What is the worst type of behaviour that you have witnessed at Auschwitz/Birkenau? Please let me know in the comments section so that other readers can know what else not to do at sights like this.
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It blows my mind that this has to be spelled out. I’ve never been to Poland but I have been looking into it and I think I would visit Auschwitz. I cannot imagine how unimaginably insensitive you would have to be to think this is ok, or even to be in that “lets take a selfie” frame of mind. Every time I’ve thought about going I’ve really thought about it hard because I’m really sensitive and just the thought of being in a place where so many were murdered makes me feel sick. In Barcelona, there’s the Montjuic Cemetery which you can take a guided tour of at night… There are several famous writers, artists and other well-known people buried there. I feel very … uneasy about the thought of taking a guided tour of a cemetery. I have been to the cemetery because they did a ceremony there for the last person executed in Catalonia by the Franco regime in 1974, Salvador Puig i Antich. I find cemeteries deeply moving even though a lot of people there probably passed away in relatively peaceful conditions, so I cant imagine being like “yayy Auschwitz selfie!”.
I know some Spanish people who were living in Manchester who went to see a cemetery in Salford because our cemeteries are very different to theirs and they marked the occasion by taking selfies with the peace sign and tongues out around a few different graves. It’s not exactly the same because millions weren’t murdered there but the level of disrespect was insane.
The crass insensitivity of certain types of people is beyond belief. Thank god the majority of us are decent respectful human beings. As you rightly point out these places are open to the public for a very good reason – unfortunately some folks are too stupid to understand.
I can’t even believe people actually do this sort of thing! It really shouldn’t be that difficult for people to just be respectful in a place like this. It’s not as if they don’t know what happened there before they visit. I visited a gaol in Melbourne and when it came to the place they used to hang people it made me very uneasy. I don’t know if I could bring myself to visit the concentration camps because of this but at the same time i feel like visiting somewhere like this gives a much greater perspective on life and history.
It really is ridiculous, the number of people who are unaware of proper etiquette at travel destinations! So appalled at some of the photos people have captured at these places. Like what is running through their minds?! Thanks for sharing this post! Hopefully, this stops more people from behaving this way.
For me, Auschwitz is a must-see, not because it is, but I am WWII nerd and I personally want to see where all horrors happened at a point. I want to see the extent those people went to torture humanity and never felt a thing. I find it really to understand why people can’t simply respect the place they’re in and behave as if they’re in a park or pub. I hope this post spreads the word and people visit Auschwitz paying more respect.
I spend a lot of time in Mostar and Sarajevo. I am studying all I can about the domestic war. I’ve witnessed young backpackers regard places like the “sniper tower” in Mostar as nothing but a tourist attraction.. and have seen some rather inappropriate videos.. (hip hop music and glamor shots of the bullet casings they found) People show up drunk and laughing. It’s just weird.. this is a place where people killed innocent civilians.
The whole IG thing too is just getting too weird and fake, and too many backpackers pretend to have a clue about the places they travel to.. but actually haven’t the faintest idea about, or any desire to know more about these places.
I agree with all of the above .It seems that most younger people , although not all seem to lack introspection and the ability to focus on anything deeper than the trivial narcissistic .It’s sad that most younger people especially, know very little of Auschwitz and see it as a tourist destination ,A sombre disneyland.It is a pilgrimage to bear witness to man’s inhumanity to man and a reminder of humans potential for such darkness .It is a psychological journey and one that is lost on some people .I cannot comprehend this casual ignorance .It’s as though the West has become indifferent and so removed from anything other than instant gratification .
You said it better than I ever could – it seems that a visit to Auschwitz is only ‘worth it,’ if you can get a nice Instagram picture, along with a few #neveragain hashtags and a nice poignant caption (preferably with a deep quote) so that people know you really care.
I’ll have to disagree with this being just a “west” problem. I’ve lived in several places and traveled to even more! That problem you describe is worldwide!!! I do originate from that “west” country you are referring to…and it’s pretty bad there, but it’s also a very big country.
I do agree with you on the main point of your comment. The generation coming up knows no other way and puts way too much importance on such things. Instead of seeing it as just a way to share things, it’s a huge attention seeker and ego boost for them.
I’m visiting Auschwitz (hopefully, Ryanair permitting) this month (October) I will take a selfie at the Arbiet Mach freight sign but that is it, not for social media, not for friends, but for my own personal memory. I’ve wanted to go there & pay respects for a very long time. I’m not doing the tour, I’m going by myself to walk around in quiet reflection. The thought of people taking selfies in the chambers or oven simply repulsed me. People dont realise that wherever you walk at Auschwitz, that you are most likely walking on the very spot where people were murdered. It’s going to be very emotional but something that something inside me tells me that I simply have to do. God bless the fallen
What do you do for food and drink if you are there all day? But there are silly people who go there to laugh at misfortune which goes to show how sick in the head they are. Most of them are drunk.
It’s just unbelievable to me that these things need to be pointed out. But then when I look around at what society has become….it’s not only infuriating, but extremely sad.
I’ve been reading about the Holocaust and survivors stories for at least 35 years. We visited Dachau last year and it was so very overwhelming for me. To stand where they stood, walked into the gates, to see where they once “lived”, slave labored, slept, suffered…broke my heart. But when we got to the crematorium, that took my breath away. That’s what really did me in and the tears really came. There’s a mass grave over by the ovens and it’s part of a garden that can be walked through. The gas chambers are at the beginning of the “newer” building of the “newer” ovens. It’s all just so surreal. To know that our fellow man could do this to another human…it’s just beyond any and all comprehension.
Everyone was respectful, acting appropriately. There just seemed to be such a heavy cloud over the place.
There’s so much detail I could give, but I will keep it to myself. It’s kind of personal I feel. We did take pictures. No pictures with either of us in them. I posted to my friends and family that we had gone and about SOME of the feelings the visit had brought up, but still I cannot bring myself to share any of the photos online. I want to, so others might see, but then I don’t, because it’s not a tourist destination.
We would like to visit Auschwitz in the next few months. Every time I think about it I almost start to cry. I know it’s going to be so very overwhelming.
I’ll NEVER EVER be able to comprehend ANY of this.
I know, it’s such a sobering experience to visit these places and I will never understand how people can be so disrespectful.