Auschwitz I Camp 360° Virtual Tour – The Main Camp (Stammlager)
A Personal Tour with Photographer Alan Jacobs
As you begin the Virtual Tour of Auschwitz with Auschwitz I — the first camp established by the Nazis at Oswiecim (the Polish name) in 1940 — you’re seeing it through the eyes of photographer Alan Jacobs, who walked this ground with a camera for over 24 years.
Now it’s your turn. Stop. Turn around. This is your perspective. Your Tour.
At the bottom of this page are a complete list of videos if you’d like to jump to a specific part of the Tour. Each stop in the Tour offers the Original 360 degree videos; next to that is Captions, the same video with captions, giving you a guided Tour with the words of Alan Jacobs.
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Auschwitz I Entrance
A Personal Tour of Auschwitz I
The Entrance to Auschwitz I
Start the Virtual Tour of Auschwitz outside the camp. Step inside and look around the new world you’re stepping into, and the old one closing behind you. Tap on an image below to enter.
Roll Call, the Electric Fence, and the Krankenbau
The Virtual Tour of Auschwitz winds down the streets of Auschwitz I. Seemingly safe and clean, that serenity is interrupted by the electrified fence, reminding you there’s no way out.
The Appelplatz Roll Call Square
For many early Auschwitz I prisoners, Roll Call was a twice a day, hours long experience of being counted. Walk through the place this daily ritual happened, including survivor Jan Komski’s painting of Roll Call.
The Electrified Fence Surrounds the Camp
The fence standing tall around the camp, with barbed wire, guard towers, and it’s electrified to kill upon touch. A constant reminder of where prisoners are, and how little control they had.
The Krankenbau
When one of the doctors in the hospital is Dr. Mengele, you know this place is about experimenting, not health care for prisoners. Many enter and never leave, sick or not.
Tour Block 11 and Block 10: The Death Blocks
Enter the prison within a prison that was the Auschwitz camp; Block 11 is where prisoners were brought to be punished, interrogated, and executed. One of the early uses of zyklon gas was inside Block 11, tested on Soviet POWs.
Inside the Containing and Standing Cells of Block 11
Now the tour steps inside Block 11, to the basement of the building. Walking through the poorly lit dank hallways, with cells so small, so dark, and so punishing on purpose. Alan takes you into these cells and as we turn with the camera, we see how small the cells are.
Seeing inside a cell built to compress you.
Some standing cells, like in this photo, could barely fit one person, several prisoners were put in each room.
Mala and Edek
One famous story in Auschwitz – and Block 11 – lore involves two people who fell in love in the camp. Edward Galinski, camp number 531, and Mala Zimetbaum camp number 19880
The Cell of Father Maksymilian Kolbe
In late July 1941, there was a successful escape. Lagerführer Karl Fritzsch selected 15 prisoners from Block 4 — the escapee’s block — to be killed by starvation, .
After the final man had been selected, Father Kolbe actually broke ranks and approached Fritzsch.
He volunteered to take the place of another man whom he knew had a family. Fritzsch accepted.
Krematorium I: The Original Gas Chamber
We begin outside the building, then enter the Gas Chamber and Furnace. The first krematorium in Auschwitz. The building was converted from an old munitions bunker to a krematorium, circa July 5, 1940.
View the Virtual Tour on YouTube
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CREDITS AND COPYRIGHT
The Virtual Tour of Auschwitz photos by Alan Jacobs.
This exhibition was prepared by invitation from
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Oswiecim, Poland
Photographs taken in Auschwitz and Birkenau in the years 2003-2004.
They were then converted into one of the first VR tours with QuickTime, completed revised and updated in 2022 to a video based Virtual Tour of Auschwitz.
© 2003, 2004 Alan Jacobs all rights reserved
All artist reproductions courtesy of Auschwitz Museum Archive.
Please contact us with questions related to this exhibit.