Tour guide - Auschwitz

From the website: "...The entry to the Auschwitz I site will be exclusively on a guided, group basis from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. during the period from April 1 to October 31, 2012...." So the only way to tour the first camp on your own is to arrive early or late. If you want to reserve a personal guide head here: http://tinyurl.com/crhn3y7

We did the group tour thing in July, 2010. Our guide was a very serious woman who did an excellent job describing what we were seeing. The problem for me, however, was that what I was seeing didn't really require description. When you see a room full of shoes or another room full of suitcases, or a giant pile of hair or eyeglasses - you don't really need to be told how they got there. I would have found the experience much more moving if I had been left alone to think about them myself. It was quite crowded in the middle of the day, and that didn't help being thoughtful, either. If I could do it again, I would find a way to get there very early or late. Also, be sure to do Birkenau down the road. You can be alone with your thoughts there - and it looks more like you might expect a death camp to look. Perhaps you could do Birkenau first, starting mid-day, and try to arrive at Auschwitz later in the afternoon?

Off-season (like in Nov when you were there) tours are not mandatory. But as was posted above from April 1-Oct 31 all visitors arriving after 10am and before 3:00pm must tour the first camp on a guided tour. It's a crowd control measure during the months when the camp gets most of it's visitors. This has been the policy for about four years now: http://en.auschwitz.org/z/

I was at Auschwitz a couple of weeks ago. I was on my own and had to join a group. I think I got more from being in a group. However, if I wandered by myself I don't think I would have gotten as much out of it.
Also, I noticed some people split off and did their own thing. It was crowded enough that the guides didn't really seem to care.