When I went to Krakow for the first time I deliberately chose not to go to Auschwitz, I know what happened there and it's truly horrific, I didn't feel that I needed to witness the place where those horrific events took place at first hand. That was 12 years ago and I returned to Krakow in 2024 with my wife who was keen to visit and pay her respects, so this time I went.

If I had to sum up my experience in one word I found the site to be depressing. The fact that it was so well organised, so regimented and clearly designed like a modern factory for processing purposes, the purpose in this case was mass murder on an industrial scale. The matter of fact way that the Nazi's experimented to find the most productive way to kill people is probably the most disturbing aspect of the site for me. All my life the thing that troubled me most is how a cultured and civilized race of European people could perpetrate such crimes against humanity, if they can sink to those depths anybody can.

Am I glad I went? I have to be honest and say no, as I stated earlier I knew what happened there. Film footage of camps being liberated are still far more shocking and emotive than visiting a site where these events took place. Also, I'm not entirely comfortable with the way it seems to have become a "must see" site on the tourist trail either. I witnessed smiling people taking selfies at Birkenau that only added to my general feeling of depression. This is not a place to take selfies and post them on social media and it shows a lack of respect and intelligence of those people.

This is just my view, my wife is glad she went, she spent a lot of money in the bookshops primarily to support the site. When I asked her if she was glad she went she said, it's not about being glad I went, I felt compelled to go and witness this myself and hope than nobody forgets these terrible things. I understand her completely but I don't feel I needed to go.

The other problem I have with this site is that I don't feel it fits with the ethos of WHS listings. This doesn't celebrate "cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity". In fact I would argue that the opposite is true. Of course Auschwitz needs to be maintained and promoted as a place of respect and mourning and of the testimony of mankind's inhumanity to man, I just don't believe that a UNESCO listing is the right vehicle for this. Having said that, if you accept the reasoning behind it's inclusion then why is not included as a group that encompasses all the death camps that the Nazi's built, Dachau, Bergen Belsen, Treblinka, Buchenwald etc? I don't understand why they selected the worst of them, for me it somehow lessens the importance of those other places because fewer people were murdered there.