Welcome to the Park of the Month newsletter for April 2025. This month we’re featuring a memorial and museum located at the site of the largest mass murder at a single location.
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
Location
Oświęcim, Poland
Claim to fame
Auschwitz was the largest German Nazi concentration camp. Based in Poland and encompassing over 40 concentration and extermination camps, the site was a factory for mass murder and is today synonymous with the most horrific acts of the Nazi-led Holocaust.
Of the 1.3 million prisoners sent to the camps at Auschwitz, 1.1 million were murdered. 960,000 of those murdered were Jews.
Reason to visit
Today the nation of Poland operates the Auschwitz I and II (otherwise known as Birkenau) camps as a memorial and museum dedicated to honoring the Nazi’s victims. Visitors can walk through the prison camp on guided tours and explore exhibits in the onsite museum.
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum reminds us of the horrors of racism and other forms of bigotry so that the events that took place there are never repeated. The memorial welcomes around 2 million visitors a year from around the world.
Wild Fact
Like in the photo above, signs reading Arbeit macht frei (“Work sets you free”) were routinely placed over the entrances of German Nazi concentration camps. This phrase was used by Nazis as a means to enforce labor at their prison work camps. The phrase’s intended message to prisoners was that the only way for them to achieve any kind of freedom was to work themselves to death.
The Auschwitz I sign seen here features an upside-down B, an intentional act of resistance by Jan Liwacz, the blacksmith and Auschwitz prisoner who was forced to create it. His small act is a reminder that even in the darkest times we can find ways to fight oppression.
Want to learn more about Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum? Visit the museum’s website.
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