Auschwitz-Birkenau is the most well known cemetery in the world and place of genocide. Started in 1940 as a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners in 1942, it became the center for extermination of European Jews. In the years 1940-45 the Nazis killed about 1.5 million people there, mainly Jews as well as Poles, Gypsies, Russian POW's and members of other nationalities.Your tour begins with a 15 minute documentary film about the liberation of the camp, then a museum guide will show you the exhibitions in some of the surviving prison blocks, the gas chamber and the crematorium.