WARSAW, Sept 23, 2008 (AFP) - Museum authorities at the former Nazi German Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland said Tuesday they had published their first-ever guide for blind and other visually-impaired visitors.

'The guide has been published in two versions, one in Braille and another in large type,' said Pawel Sawicki, spokesman of the state-run Memorial and Museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which is located near the southern Polish city of Oswiecim.

In addition, the museum has also produced a site plan for blind visitors.

'Above all, we wanted to convey the enormity of the site and not the exact location of the buildings,' expert Leszek Ogorek told Poland's PAP news agency.

'The layout of the former Auschwitz I camp (set up by the Germans at a former Polish army barracks) is easy to set down, given its relatively limited size. But the camp at Birkenau was so huge that it's very hard to readily convey each detail,' Ogorek explained.

The Nazis set up Auschwitz mostly for members of the Polish resistance, nine months after invading Poland in 1939.

Two years later they greatly expanded the site at nearby Brzezinka, or Birkenau, creating a combined 191-hectare (472-acre) killing zone.

Around 1.1 million people died at Auschwitz-Birkenau between 1940 and 1945 -- one million of them Jews from Poland and elsewhere in Nazi-occupied Europe -- some from overwork, starvation and disease, but most in the notorious gas chambers.

Auschwitz-Birkenau has become an enduring symbol of the Holocaust.

It was one of six death camps, also including Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek and Belzec, created by Nazi Germany during World War II to kill Jews from across occupied Europe.

Poles, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war were among the other prisoners and victims at Auschwitz-Birkenau and similar death camps.

The camp museum, which was set up in 1947, last year drew a record 1.22 million visitors compared to half that number in 2001.