Auschwitz-Birkenau — a remembrance visit with private transport from Krakow

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The Auschwitz concentration camp was established by the SS in June 1940 in pre-war Polish army barracks in Oświęcim, on Polish territory annexed to the Third Reich. The first transport — 728 Polish political prisoners from the prison in Tarnów — arrived on 14 June 1940. Over the following months the Germans expanded the complex with Auschwitz II–Birkenau (operational from autumn 1941 and designed as a centre of mass extermination) and Auschwitz III–Monowitz (a forced labour camp serving the IG Farben corporation). More than forty sub-camps were also established. The decision to turn Birkenau into the principal centre of the “Endlösung der Judenfrage" — the Final Solution to the Jewish question — was taken in the spring of 1942. In the four gas chambers attached to Crematoria II, III, IV and V, German perpetrators murdered approximately one million Jews deported from ghettos and assembly points in Poland, Hungary, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Greece, Slovakia, Bohemia and Moravia, Germany, Norway, Italy and other countries of occupied Europe. The largest wave of killings fell during the spring and summer of 1944, when the so-called Hungarian Action saw more than 430,000 Hungarian Jews murdered in a matter of weeks. Alongside the Jewish victims, approximately 70,000 to 75,000 non-Jewish Poles (predominantly intelligentsia, resistance members and political prisoners), some 21,000 Roma and Sinti, around 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war and thousands of prisoners of other nationalities were murdered at Auschwitz. The total death toll is today estimated at no fewer than 1.1 million people. On 27 January 1945, soldiers of the 60th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front of the Red Army entered Auschwitz, liberating approximately 7,000 prisoners whom the SS had left behind — too weakened to be driven westward on the death marches into the Reich. The date of liberation is now observed as International Holocaust Remembrance Day (United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60/7 of 2005). The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum was established by a resolution of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland on 2 July 1947. In 1979 the site was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The museum today stands as one of the foremost centres of Holocaust research, the education of successor generations and the safeguarding of the memory of the victims.

A remembrance visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau requires mandatory advance entry booking, ideally several weeks ahead during the spring-to-autumn season. VIP Transfers coordinates the booking directly with the museum’s guides office and aligns the entry slot with what is realistically sustainable for the family — a consideration that matters particularly for older relatives, for whom a full day of touring can be physically and emotionally taxing. A standard visit with a licensed educator lasts approximately three and a half hours at Auschwitz I (the museum blocks, Block 11, the Wall of Death, Crematorium I) and two hours at Birkenau (the selection ramp, the women’s barracks, the ruins of Crematoria II and III, the international monument). Between the two sites we provide private Mercedes V-Class transfer — roughly three kilometres, a few minutes — sparing visitors the queue for the museum shuttle bus and preserving composure after a demanding morning. Dress appropriate to a place of remembrance is expected. Photography should be restrained — in certain rooms (notably the hall of human hair in Block 4) photography is explicitly forbidden. Children under fourteen are not admitted to the museum, in line with official guidance. For Jewish families planning to recite Kaddish or place memorial stones at the monument in Birkenau, we ask the educator to reserve time and a space away from touring groups so that the prayer may be spoken in quiet.

From a hotel in central Krakow to the gates of Auschwitz I, a Mercedes V-Class drive takes approximately one hour and fifteen minutes via the A4 motorway and the national road. We typically plan departure between 7:30 and 8:30 so that museum entry falls in the morning hours, when light and footfall favour quiet reflection. The return to Krakow after the visit to Birkenau usually falls between 16:00 and 17:30. The Mercedes V-Class comfortably accommodates up to seven passengers and offers full climate control, privacy and space for conversation or silence, as the family prefers. The driver remains discreetly nearby throughout the day: available should the visit need to be shortened, should water or a warm drink be needed, or should a swift departure be required if anyone feels unwell. The museum maintains a roster of licensed educators in Polish, English, Hebrew, French, German, Italian and Spanish — we coordinate language selection and booking for each visit. For families seeking deeper family-specific context — searching for surnames in museum records, deportation documentation, locations in memorial books — we assist in arranging a private consultation with the museum’s collections department or with the Auschwitz Jewish Center in Oświęcim. For guests combining the remembrance visit with synagogue prayer in Krakow, we arrange morning or evening transfers to the Remuh Synagogue in Kazimierz. Hotel pickup and drop-off are included in the transfer fee.