Auschwitz-Birkenau + Salt-Mine

Private bus transfer with organized sightseeing of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Wieliczka Salt Mine

We invite you to join our unique one day tour, which allows you to discover two most popular tourist destinations nearby Krakow in a comfortable, rush free manner. Thanks to our experience we can offer complete and well organized trip from door to door, so you can fully enjoy your day and get the most of it.

  Excursions with private transport

- excursions with a private transport service

- private chauffeur service

- pick up from location of choice

- logistics ( advice on places to visit, ticket purchase etc.)

- free time activities arrangement

- transport of organized groups and individuals

- comfortable conditions

- flexible and fair cooperation

  Price list

Auschwitz-birkenau + Salt Mine
Day Tour


1 person: 720 PLN
2 people: 920 PLN
3 people: 1100 PLN
4 people: 1350 PLN
5 people: 1650 PLN
6people: 1800 PLN
7 people: 2300 PLN
8 people: 2600 PLN

The price includes:
hotel pick up, two way transfer, tickets.

Call and order:

+48 727 224 777

 

Part 1 - Auschwitz-Birkenau

 

 

We start with the transfer from your place of accommodation to Aushwitz-Birkenau camp located around 70 kilometers West from Krakow. On the spot you will be guided by a museum guide speaking your language through different parts of this famous memorial place.

The Auschwitz concentration camp was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp and administrative headquarters, in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II–Birkenau, a combined concentration/extermination camp three kilometers away in Brzezinka; Auschwitz III–Monowitz, a labor camp seven kilometers from Auschwitz I, set up to staff an IG Farben synthetic-rubber factory; and dozens of other subcamps. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, sparking World War II, the Germans converted Auschwitz I from an army barracks to hold Polish political prisoners. The first prisoners, German criminals brought to the camp as functionaries, arrived in May 1940 and the first gassing of prisoners took place in block 11 of Auschwitz I in September 1941. Auschwitz II–Birkenau went on to become a major site of the Nazis' Final Solution to the Jewish Question. From early 1942 until late 1944, transport trains delivered Jews from all over German-occupied Europe to the camp's gas chambers. Of the estimated 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, at least 1.1 million died,[5] around 90 percent of them Jews. Approximately one in six Jews killed in the Holocaust died at the camp. Others deported to Auschwitz included 150,000 non-Jewish Poles, 23,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, 400 Jehovah's Witnesses, tens of thousands of others of diverse nationalities, and an unknown number of gay men. Many of those not killed in the gas chambers died because of starvation, forced labor, infectious diseases, individual executions, and medical experiments.

In the course of the war, the camp was staffed by 7,000 members of the German Schutzstaffel (SS), approximately 12 percent of whom were later convicted of war crimes. Several, including camp commandant Rudolf Höss, were executed. The Allies did not act on early reports of atrocities at the camp, and their failure to bomb the camp or its railways remains controversial. At least 802 prisoners tried to escape from Auschwitz, 144 successfully, and on 7 October 1944 two Sonderkommando units, consisting of prisoners assigned to staff the gas chambers, launched a brief, unsuccessful uprising.

As Soviet troops approached Auschwitz in January 1945, most of its population was sent west on a death march. The remaining prisoners were liberated on 27 January 1945, a day commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the following decades, survivors such as Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, and Elie Wiesel wrote memoirs of their experiences in Auschwitz, and the camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust. In 1947 Poland founded the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum on the site of Auschwitz I and II, and in 1979 it was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

 

Part 2 - Wieliczka Salt Mine

 

 

After the tour you will be transferred to Wieliczka located about 10 kilometers South-East from Krakow. On our way we suggest to take a break for refreshments or lunch in a place of your choice. Of course we would be happy to give you recommendations of the places that are considered best of kind. After the break we drop you off at the entrance of Wieliczka Salt Mine and await your return.

The Wieliczka salt mine, excavated from the 13th century, produced table salt continuously until 2007, as one of the world's oldest operating salt mines. Throughout its history, the royal salt mine was operated by the Żupy Krakowskie (Krakow Salt Mines) company.

Commercial salt mining was discontinued in 1996 owing to falling salt prices and mine flooding. The Wieliczka Salt Mine is now an official Polish Historic Monument. Its attractions include the shafts and labyrinthine passageways, displays of historic salt-mining technology, an underground lake, four chapels and numerous statues carved by miners out of the rock salt, and more recent sculptures by contemporary artists.

The Wieliczka Salt Mine reaches a depth of 327 meters, and extends via horizontal passages and chambers for over 287 kilometers (178 miles). The rock salt is naturally of varying shades of grey, resembling unpolished granite rather than the white crystalline substance that might be expected.

Since the 13th century, brine flowing up to the surface of the earth had been collected and processed for its sodium chloride (table salt) content. At this time wells were sunk and the first shafts dug to extract the rock salt.

Many chambers have been dug over the period of the mine's operation and various technologies were added, such as the Hungarian horse treadmill and the Saxon treadmill for hauling salt to the surface. During World War II, the mine was used by the occupying Germans as an underground facility for war-related manufacturing.

The mine features an underground lake, exhibits on the history of salt mining, and a 3.5-kilometer (2.2-mile) visitors' route (less than 2% of the mine passages' total length) including statues carved from the rock salt at various times. The chandelier crystals are made from rock salt dissolved and reconstituted to achieve a clear, glass-like appearance. The mine also houses a private rehabilitation and wellness complex.

In 1978 the Wieliczka was placed on the original UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.

After sightseeing, the ending transfer occurs. At the place of your accommodation doors, we say goodbye to each other, knowing that it was a day that will last in your memory for a long time. All of the wisdom and experience gathered, will definitely enrich you and are worth sharing, at least with the ones you care about. We are proud of providing the service that helped you achieve it.