Uploaded January 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Each installment of Ben's Tours takes you on a visit to a special place. And sometimes, those are historical sites. This time join me as we do a little exploring in the ruins of the Auschwitz Food Storage buildings. Also known as the Potato Warehouse, this was the first thing that hundreds of thousands of Jewish prisoners deported to Auschwitz would have seen as they disembarked their transport trains at the Judenrampe, and marched to nearby Birkenau.
The warehouses did not contain provisions for prisoners. Rather they stored produce grown around the Auschwitz zone of interest, by prisoner labour. Cattle cars would arrive full of prisoners, and leave filled with vegetables sent west back into the Reich for sale. The buildings were constructed by prisoners in 1943, and from the fall of '43 until the camp's liquidation in January of 1945, they housed things like potatoes, rutabagas, turnips and beets.
I also have to say I discovered the building by accident, and had never known about it until I stumbled upon it. I was walking back to Auschwitz I from Auschwitz II (Birkenau) and planned to visit the Judenrampe site on the way. I took a different road than on previous visits, and saw a series of abandoned red brick buildings. Knowing that anything in the area that looked like that was likely a Nazi-era construction, I went for a closer look. Using Google Translate, I was able to determine from a Polish sign what the structures were, and that the site is undergoing restoration efforts. I don't know if I was really supposed to be in them, but the buildings were wide open, with nothing I recognized as a "Do Not Enter" sign. So, with no one around, I decided to explore the buildings (treading lightly, and being respectful, not touching or disturbing anything).
Each installment of Ben's Tours takes you on a visit to a special place. And sometimes, those are historical sites. This time join me as we do a little exploring in the ruins of the Auschwitz Food Storage buildings. Also known as the Potato Warehouse, this was the first thing that hundreds of thousands of Jewish prisoners deported to Auschwitz would have seen as they disembarked their transport trains at the Judenrampe, and marched to nearby Birkenau.
The warehouses did not contain provisions for prisoners. Rather they stored produce grown around the Auschwitz zone of interest, by prisoner labour. Cattle cars would arrive full of prisoners, and leave filled with vegetables sent west back into the Reich for sale. The buildings were constructed by prisoners in 1943, and from the fall of '43 until the camp's liquidation in January of 1945, they housed things like potatoes, rutabagas, turnips and beets.
I also have to say I discovered the building by accident, and had never known about it until I stumbled upon it. I was walking back to Auschwitz I from Auschwitz II (Birkenau) and planned to visit the Judenrampe site on the way. I took a different road than on previous visits, and saw a series of abandoned red brick buildings. Knowing that anything in the area that looked like that was likely a Nazi-era construction, I went for a closer look. Using Google Translate, I was able to determine from a Polish sign what the structures were, and that the site is undergoing restoration efforts. I don't know if I was really supposed to be in them, but the buildings were wide open, with nothing I recognized as a "Do Not Enter" sign. So, with no one around, I decided to explore the buildings (treading lightly, and being respectful, not touching or disturbing anything).
