Every year on January 27th, there is a day to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. To enhance your educational resources, TCBC has produced an online tour of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.
We are very grateful to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum for their cooperation and for allowing us exclusive access to film on the site.
Museum Educator Paweł Sawicki walks TCBC's guide Paulina Jurkowska-Pudełko through both camps discussing a wide range of topics, specially tailored to a student audience, as detailed below:
Auschwitz site
- Preparation - the best way to visit Auschwitz
- The Story of Auschwitz - why the Nazis needed a camp (overcrowded prisons), how it developed into part of the Final Solution and turned from a prison camp to an extermination camp
- Surrounding buildings, size of camp, numbers
- Role of the Orchestra - dehumanisation of the camp
- Inside the barracks / exhibitions
- Why this location?
- Victim groups
- How these groups were moved to the camp
- Archive photos from Birkenau - pictures of Hungarian Jews made by SS documenting logistical process
- Process of extermination in Birkenau
- Unloading, selection process, empty platforms, robbery, individual perpetrators
- Story of victims but also story of perpetrators
- What happened to prisoners’ personal effects
- Every day life of prisoners - their first moments, transfer of person to prisoner, losing individuality
- Children in Auschwitz
- The Block of Death (camp prison) & execution wall
- Auschwitz as a business / profit earner
- Who worked in Auschwitz
- What happened to those who worked in the camp after the war (perpetrators’ fate)
- Rudolf Hess, the 1st commandant
- Gas chamber / crematorium
Birkenau site
- Size of camp, panoramic views
- Railway line
- Unloading and selection process
- Barracks, accommodation, living standards
- Unloading platform
- Survivors’ voices / books
- Gas chamber
- Warning for today
- 1967 monument to commemorate victims
- What can we do today to make the world a better place?
You can view an excerpt from this tour by clicking on the video below.
Prices range from £1-£5 pp depending on the number of students. TCBC makes a donation to the museum for every tour sold.
To book this tour, or to find out more, please email info@tcbcschooltours.co.uk