Auschwitz sees record visitors in 2018

The Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp saw record number of visitors last year, the museum at the site said on Friday.

Some 2.15 million people visited the former Nazi concentration and extermination camp in southern Poland in 2018 — about 50,000 more than the previous record set in 2017.

Poles topped the list with 405,000 of them visiting the site last year. They were followed by 281,000 Britons and136, 000 Americans.

Germany ranked sixth with 76,000 visitors, down 9,000 from last year.

Horrors of Holocaust

Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest Nazi death camp. More than 1.1 million people, a vast majority of them Jews from across Europe, were murdered at the camp during the World War II. Almost 40 percent of the registered prisoners were Poles.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau museum was set up in 1947. The 191-hectare (472-acre) site comprises the former Auschwitz main camp and the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp with a total of around 150 buildings and around 300 ruins, including the ruins of the gas chambers and crematoria.

The site has been on Unesco's World Heritage list since 1979.

ap/rt (AFP, KNA)

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