After Your Visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau
A visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau is emotionally demanding in ways that most people underestimate, and the hours immediately after leaving the site deserve as much thought as the hours on it. Give yourself time — do not rush from Birkenau onto a train, into a car, or straight to a restaurant. Sit quietly. Talk if you want to, or do not. The experience takes time to absorb, and trying to force it into the framework of a normal tourist day does not serve you well.
This is not a guide to what to do after Auschwitz. There is no programme, no recommended next stop, no list of nearby attractions to visit. It is a guide to giving yourself permission to do nothing — or very little — for a period after leaving the memorial, and to some resources that may help you continue engaging with what you have seen in the days and weeks that follow.
Give Yourself Time Immediately After the Visit
Most visitors to Auschwitz-Birkenau describe the experience as more intense than they anticipated — even those who considered themselves well-prepared. The combination of physical exhaustion (5–7 km of walking, often in challenging weather) and emotional weight produces a state that is not always easy to name but is universally recognised among those who have been there.
The instinct to immediately normalise — to get on a bus, check a phone, find lunch, move on to the next thing — is understandable but worth resisting.
Before leaving the site, allow yourself to sit at the café near the entrance if you need to. The museum grounds have benches. The return journey from Auschwitz to Kraków by bus or car is 90 minutes — this is time, if you allow it, not to scroll or talk on the phone but simply to be with what you have just experienced.
If you are part of an organised guided tour, your educator-guide may acknowledge the transition back at the end of the tour. Many guides close at the International Monument and allow the group to make its own way back, without further commentary — a deliberate act of respect for the transition.
If You Are Staying in Kraków
Kraków is the right place to spend the evening after Auschwitz-Birkenau. The city is quiet enough in the evening to allow for reflection, and rich enough in history to provide a different kind of engagement with the past if you want it.
The Kazimierz district — the historic Jewish quarter of Kraków — is a particularly appropriate place to spend the evening after Auschwitz. It was the home of a thriving Jewish community before the war, and walking its streets, seeing the synagogues and the memorial plaques, connects the abstract history of the Holocaust to the specific community that was destroyed. Several of Kazimierz’s cafés and restaurants are quiet in the evenings and entirely appropriate settings for the kind of conversation — or silence — the day may call for.
The Schindler Factory Museum at Podgórze, if you have not already visited it, provides a complementary account of Kraków’s wartime history from the perspective of the occupied city — a useful supplement to the Auschwitz visit, though it warrants its own separate day rather than being tacked onto the evening after.
Recommended Reading
First-person survivor accounts:
- If This Is a Man by Primo Levi — the most widely cited account of life inside Auschwitz, written by an Italian Jewish chemist who survived. Precise, measured, and devastating.
- Night by Elie Wiesel — a short, essential account of deportation to Auschwitz and the death marches, written by the Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
- The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris — a narrative account based on the testimony of Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jewish prisoner who worked as the camp tattooist. More novelistic in style than Levi or Wiesel.
Historical studies:
- Auschwitz: A History by Sybille Steinbacher — a concise, authoritative scholarly account of the camp’s history from establishment to liberation.
- The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert Paxton — essential context for understanding how the Nazi programme developed within a broader political history.
- Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning — a study of the Reserve Police Battalion 101, which examines how ordinary German men became mass murderers. Deeply relevant to understanding the human dimension of the perpetrators.
The museum’s own publications:
The museum bookshop at Auschwitz I carries an extensive range of publications in multiple languages, including the official museum guidebook, documentary collections, and academic studies specific to the Auschwitz complex. If you did not purchase anything during your visit, the museum’s online shop at auschwitz.org/en/museum/publications offers many of the same titles.
Educational Resources
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum maintains extensive educational resources for teachers, students, and general visitors at auschwitz.org/en/education. These include lesson plans, documentary materials, testimony archives, and virtual exhibitions.
The USC Shoah Foundation (sfi.usc.edu) holds the world’s largest archive of survivor and witness testimonies — over 55,000 recorded interviews, many of which are accessible online through its IWitness platform.
Yad Vashem (yadvashem.org) — Israel’s official Holocaust memorial and research institute — maintains one of the most comprehensive digital archives of Holocaust documentation, including names, photographs, and testimonies.
If You Are Travelling with Children or Students
If you visited Auschwitz-Birkenau with children or as part of a school group, the hours after the visit are particularly important for conversation and processing. Young people may respond in ways that are not immediately legible — quietness, unexpected questions, apparent detachment, or strong emotional reactions — all of which are normal responses to an extraordinary experience.
The museum’s education department provides specific resources for teachers and group leaders following a visit, available at auschwitz.org/en/education. These include guidance on how to facilitate post-visit discussion and how to address difficult questions that may arise in the days that follow.
The Museum’s Ongoing Work
Visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau is not only a personal experience — it is also a form of support for the museum’s ongoing work of preservation, documentation, and education. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum is a publicly funded institution, but it also relies on private support to maintain the physical site — which requires constant, specialised conservation work — and to fund its educational programmes worldwide.
If you wish to support the museum’s work, information on donations is available at auschwitz.org/en/foundation.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do people feel after visiting Auschwitz?
Responses vary enormously, but the most commonly reported experiences are: emotional exhaustion, a heightened awareness of the present moment, difficulty returning to ordinary conversation, a need for quiet, and — after some time — a strong desire to tell others about what was seen. Feeling overwhelmed, numb, or unable to articulate the experience are all normal responses. There is no correct way to feel after Auschwitz.
How long does it take to process a visit to Auschwitz?
There is no defined timeline. Some visitors find the experience continues to surface in the days and weeks that follow — in conversations, in the books they read, in what they notice about the world around them. This is entirely normal and, in some ways, is precisely what the memorial is designed to achieve: not a contained experience that begins and ends at the gate, but a lasting engagement with the history.
Should I visit the Schindler Factory Museum on the same day as Auschwitz?
We would generally advise against it. The Schindler Factory Museum is an excellent and substantial institution that warrants its own full visit. Combining it with Auschwitz-Birkenau on the same day risks doing justice to neither. If your time in Kraków allows, visit the Schindler Factory on a separate day — ideally before your Auschwitz visit, as it provides useful context for the wartime history of the city and region.
Is there anything I should do the day after visiting Auschwitz?
Nothing prescribed. Some visitors find that a quiet morning — a walk, time in a café, reading — is exactly right. Others want to visit Kazimierz or another historically significant site in Kraków. Others simply want to leave Poland and begin processing at home. All of these are valid. The only thing we would gently caution against is filling the day immediately after with dense tourism that leaves no space for the experience to settle.
