January 27, 2025, marks 80 years since Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp toward the end of WW2. The Nazis murdered more than a million people at the site in the Polish town of of Oświęcim, about 40 miles west of Kraków. It was the largest of the twenty-three main Nazi concentration camps. Now, live and guided online tours of Auschwitz are available through the “Auschwitz in Front of Your Eyes” program. But they’re not your typical virtual tours.
“Auschwitz in Front of Your Eyes”
The “Auschwitz in Front of Your Eyes” program launched in 2024 to make the memorial site accessible to interested parties who cannot visit in person. An official guide provides live narration and answers questions during each 2.5-hour tour. And these virtual visits are offered in English, Polish, Hebrew, Spanish, German, French, and Italian. The program is delivered in two parts—one about Auschwitz and the other about Birkenau. (The camp actually consisted of three main components—Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II, and Birkenau—plus dozens of subcamps.)
Bonus Areas — Available Only with an Online Tour of Auschwitz
The online tours of Auschwitz incorporate multimedia presentations that include the testimony of camp survivors, archival photos, video, and documents. They don’t visit the memorial center’s museums, whose exhibits are replaced by the multimedia content. But the virtual tours do explore areas that are off-limits or otherwise inaccessible to in-person visitors.
Online Tours of Auschwitz – How to Book
Online tours of Auschwitz—either for individuals or groups—are free but must be reserved in advance at the memorial center’s official website.
Simply create an account there and once logged in, navigate to the online tours section. Individuals can register as a school representative to leverage opportunities only available to educational institutions.
Online Tours of Auschwitz – Schedule
At the reservation page, just fill in the requested personal details. Then choose your preferred date and time. But pay close attention—the dates are listed with the day first, then the month, and finally the year. (So May 11, 2025, appears as 11.05.2025.)
Online tours are available every ten minutes from 07:30 to 18:00 CET (Central European Time), which is 6 hours ahead of New York. The reservation system automatically detects the time zone from which you logged in and converts the time for you—but be sure to double-check the accuracy.
For more information about “Auschwitz in Front of Your Eyes,” visit the official website.
In-Person Visits to Auschwitz
For those who can make the trip, an in-person visit to Auschwitz, though somber and disturbing, is worth the time and effort. The scale of the camp—and the tragedy that unfolded within its confines—is perhaps best grasped in person. But for those who would otherwise miss the opportunity to learn about the site, the online tours of Auschwitz are a still remarkable, powerful, and worthwhile experience.
Watch for my upcoming article about in-person visits—including insights and experiences shared with our group by a survivor of Auschwitz.
In the meantime, learn more about the memorial center and museum here. And be sure to see the photo gallery below for images of the camp.
More Articles About the Holocaust and WW2
Be sure to read my article about Stolpersteine—unusual memorials to victims of the Holocaust that are dispersed throughout Europe. You can also read about an American soldier’s visit to Hitler’s bunker in Germany—directly from his diary. Check out this remarkable story about Czech resistance during WW2 and the assassination of SS leader Reinhard Heydrich. Or discover why Malta was the key to winning WW2.
