A record 2.32 million people visited the sites of the Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz and Auschwitz II-Birkenau in Poland last year, the Auschwitz Memorial announced on Tuesday.
That number is about 170,000 more than in 2018, which also broke previous records.
Some 81 percent of last year’s visitors learned about the camp’s history with one of the museum’s 340 guides, who conduct tours in 21 languages. More than 14,000 people in organized groups visited the sites as part of study visits, which is approximately a 20 percent increase compared to the previous year.
According to data in the online reservation system, in 2019, the memorial was visited by at least 396,000 visitors from Poland, 200,000 from Great Britain, 120,000 from the United States, 104,000 from Italy, 73,000 from Germany, 70,000 from Spain, 67,000 from France, 59,000 from Israel, 42,000 from Ireland and 40,000 from Sweden.
“However, [the] data [is] not complete because in relation to the 730,000 visitors who came to the memorial in international groups, the organizers of the trips did not declare a particular country,” said Andrzej Kacorzyk, director of the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust. “Consequently, we are undertaking actions aimed at making the statistical data more detailed through the electronic system for booking entry cards.”
The museum added that as many as 900,000 users follow its account on Twitter, and more than 300,000 use the museum’s profile on Facebook with 80,000 on Instagram.
