Birkenau (Auschwitz) Concentration
and Extermination Camp
The second main part
of the Auschwitz complex was the Birkenau camp. This large complex covered some
430 acres, located about 3km
northwest of the main camp. It was originally designed in 1941 and built over
the winter of 1941-42 to house
Soviet prisoners of war, who were kept in the main camp and then moved to
Birkenau when it was ready. However, Birkenau's primary purpose quickly became a
concentration camp for forced laborers and Jewish deportees, and eventually, the main site for
extermination of Jews and others who were condemned to the death camp.
At the height of its
existence in 1944, some 90-100,000 inmates were incarcerated in the Birkenau camp complex,
which was divided into three different sections, called Lager BI, BII, and BIII.
Lagers BI and BII were further subdivided into separate camp sections. Lager
BIII, called "Mexico" by the inmates, was never completed and was
abandoned in late 1944. The
different Lagers and subsections served different purposes, and prisoner life in
different sections could be completely different from others. However, for most
prisoners, Birkenau meant eventual death. Most of the prisoners who were housed
at Birkenau were put to work on various agricultural projects of the Auschwitz
Interest Zone, or in manual labor digging ditches and maintaining and
improving the camp area. Many Birkenau prisoners were eventually moved to other
labor and armaments camps in Germany, such as Mittelbau-Dora,
or Mauthausen in Austria.
Some 56,000 inmates were marched out of the Auschwitz complex in January 1945 on the infamous
"death marches," and 5800 prisoners, too sick or debilitated to march,
were left in the camp when the Soviet liberators arrived on 27 January 1945.
The following camp
sections served special purposes:
- Lager BIIa
served as quarantine barracks for arriving male prisoners. After a time, these
prisoners were moved to other parts of the camp. The barracks were later used
for storage.
- Lager BIIb was used from September 1943 to house
families from the Jewish ghetto of Theresienstadt (Terezin) in Czechoslovakia.
For a time, this camp was used as a "model camp" for propaganda
purposes, and the inmates were allowed to keep their hair and their own clothing
and belongings. They also received parcels and could write to family. The camp
was liquidated in July 1944, with most of the inmates being sent to the gas
chambers. Late in 1944 the camp housed female working prisoners from Lager BI.
- Lager BIIc was used in the summer of 1944 to house "transit" Jewish
female prisoners, who were supposed to be sent on to other camps.
- Lager BIIe was the "Zigeunerlager," or Gypsy (Roma) family camp,
established in February 1943. As in the Theresienstadt Lager BIIb camp,
prisoners in the Gypsy camp were allowed to keep their hair, clothing and
belongings, but in this camp the families were housed together (this did not
occur anywhere else in Auschwitz). After an attempt to liquidate the camp in
which the Gypsies resisted the SS guards, the camp was liquidated in early
August 1944, when some 3000 prisoners were sent to the gas chambers. Lager BIIe
was later used to house sick female prisoners and children from Lager BI.
- Lager BIIf was the camp hospital section and male
prisoners infirmary. SS doctors such as Josef Mengele carried out medical
experiments on prisoners and children in various barracks of this camp area.
- Lager BIIg was the so-called "Canada" goods
sorting and storage area.
- "Children's Barracks" - Until 1943,
most children sent to or born in Auschwitz were immediately killed in the gas
chambers. Later, children lived in the family camps in Lagers BIIb and BIIe
(where there were kindergarten and school barracks and even a playground and
puppet theater), and individual children were housed together in certain
barracks in Lager BI. SS doctor Josef Mengele kept special barracks in Lagers BI
and BII for the children, especially twins, that he subjected to medical
experiments.
- The Sonderkommando,
male prisoners who worked in the crematoria and
gas chambers, were kept apart from other prisoners. At various times, Sonderkommando
prisoners were kept isolated in Block 2 of Lager BIb and Block 13 in Lager
BIId. Later, the Sonderkommandos of Crematoria II and III were housed
in the attics of those buildings.
Interest in
preserving the remains of the Birkenau camp began soon after the war ended, but
many wooden structures were torn down before the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum was
initiated in 1947. Most of the original area of the Birkenau camp is today preserved and
interpreted by the Museum.
The Lagers were
meant primarily for inmates intended to serve as laborers. But at the same time,
Birkenau served as a center for extermination of Jews from all over Europe. This page is divided
into two parts - Part 2
covers the extermination program - the ramp selection process and the gas
chambers and crematoria.
For sources of the
information found on these pages, see the list of References.
The building designations in parentheses (e.g., BW9) were the original
construction project numbers for each building.

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The entry building to the
Birkenau camp (BW9), which has become infamous as the "Gate of
Death," was built in two stages. The main entryways (rail and road)
were built in 1942 and the side wing that appears to the right of the tower was added
in 1943, for a transformer station. The object on top of the tower
roof, that sometimes appears to be a cross in photos, was a siren. The
single rail line entering the camp came from the area of the Judenrampe,
and was added in the spring of 1944 to permit detraining of deportees
directly in the camp, close to Crematoria 2 and
3. (Google
Maps link)
The images below show the view
from inside the camp, looking out. The single rail line that entered the
camp split into three tracks inside. The period view, taken shortly after the liberation in January 1945, shows a pile
of pots, pans, and other deportee belongings lying on the rails, as well
as camouflage stripes painted on the gate building. (postwar
postcard) |
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Original rail switching
apparatus and rails still exist in Birkenau. The unloading ramp for
arriving prisoners is the partly buried concrete structure seen to the
right of the rails in the photo on the right. The flimsy wooden towers seen
along the fence lines on either side of the rail area are all postwar
replicas of the guard towers that once stood there. (See here
for the ramp "selection process.") |
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Block 13 in Lager BIa
(renumbered to Block 16 in 1944) housed children for much of its
existence. In 1942 these were Polish children with their mothers; in
1944 this barracks housed Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto.
Inmates decorated some of the walls with scenes of children playing and
going to school. In contrast to the dirt/mud floors of the other
barracks, this Block had a floor paved with brick. |
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Block 25 of Lager BIa (above
left) was called the "Death Barrack" because female prisoners
who had been deemed unfit for work were kept there until they were sent
to the gas chambers. In Block 28 (right above) newborn babies and their
mothers were executed by phenol injections to the heart. In contrast to
the horse stable type barracks in Lager BII, this barrack was of the
so-called "Swiss" type, with windows, floors, and ceilings (a
few of this type were also in Lager BIIf and BIIg). Below left is
the site of Block 30, where sterilization experiments were performed on
prisoners by SS doctor Carl Clauberg and others (see
also here). Below right is the site of Block 31, which housed Jewish
children in 1944, including twins and others used as subjects for
medical experiments by SS doctor Josef Mengele. |
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The buildings in the left
background of the photo of the Block 31 site above were latrine and
washroom buildings, five in each of the two sections of Lager BI (BW7a).
The latrines were very
primitive facilities, with just holes in a long concrete bench. (Yad
Vashem Collections) |

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Two brick buildings in Lager BI,
one in B1a (left above) and one in BIb (right above), were used for
prisoner showers and delousing of clothing and bedding (BW5a). Before
the "Sauna" was opened, initial
registration for newcomers took place here. Most of the delousing was done by
steam apparatus (see below), but the east
wing (side wing) of the building in Lager BIb (below) was converted to
use cyanide delousing chambers. The use of Zyklon B cyanide insecticide as a delousing agent
in this wing produced the dark "prussian blue" staining
visible in the bricks to this day. The scoop-shaped openings on the end
wall of the east wing were for ventilation. |
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The "prussian blue"
cyanide staining from the use of Zyklon B is visible on both sides of
the delousing wing of building BW5a in Lager BIb, which had no windows (in contrast to the similar
building in Lager BIa). The circular openings in the end wall of the
wing allowed ventilation fans to circulate air following a Zyklon B
delousing session. |
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The building is in poor shape on
the inside today. The room at the left may have housed steam delousing
apparatus. The wall on the right still bears the original logo "Eine
Laus dein Tod" - "One louse, your death" - referring to
the dangers of lice-born typhus epidemics in the camp. |

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A large kitchen building was provided in
each of the two sections of Lager BI (left above). The building on the right above
was a storehouse (BW4a) for clothing in Lager BIb (in the left background are the
ruins of Crematorium
II). |
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Lager BII consisted of 180 wooden barracks and kitchen buildings, along
with 18 wooden buildings for hospital wards, and six wooden Blockführer
buildings – over 200 buildings in all (BW5d). The wooden barracks, which had
been built on plans for horse stables, were each designed for 400 prisoners, but most housed
hundreds more in very crowded conditions. The wooden barracks
were almost all removed after the war, and all that remains of most of
Lager BII today are the brick stoves and chimneys, and a couple of
brick walls, surrounded by the ubiquitous concrete posts for the
electrified barbed wire fencing. The view on the right above looks over
Lagers BIIc and BIIb, toward BIIa. The remains below are in Lager BIId, part
of the men's camp. (Yad Vashem Collections) |
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The first row of barracks - Lager BIIa - served as a quarantine barracks
for newly arrived male prisoners (converted to a warehouse area during
the final two months of the camp's existence).
Along with
the living barracks were latrine barracks, consisting of very primitive
facilities (below). (Yad Vashem Collections)
Note - Guide books, reports, and
tour guides from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum say that these wooden
barracks buildings are the originals, but other sources (sometimes
quoting Museum personnel) report that all the original wooden Birkenau
barracks, except one, were torn down after the war, and the wood used
during postwar reconstruction in Warsaw, and that the barracks we see
today are rebuilt replicas (except one original, located behind these in Lager BIIb). See Ref.
1, page 10; Ref.
2, pages 33, 132-33; Ref. 6, pages 20, 22, 136. (Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, www.auschwitz.org) |
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On the left is Block 30 of Lager
BIIb, which is said to be the only original wooden barrack left in Lager
BII. This is only half of the original barrack, the other half of
which was on loan to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington,
DC, from 1989-2013. Although the walls and roofs are reportedly rebuilt,
the beams of some of the Lager BIIa buildings appear to be original. The
cross beam on the right above appears to bear original lettering HALTE
ORDNUNG - Keep Order. (Note - The other half of Block 30 was re-erected
here in late 2015 or early 2016.) |
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Above, women prisoners were found crammed
into one of these Lager BII barracks after liberation in January 1945. The long
concrete duct running down the center of the floor was supposed to heat
the whole barracks from the stoves at either end. (Auschwitz-Birkenau
State Museum, www.auschwitz.org; Yad Vashem Collections)
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This view of Lager BIIa
was taken from the tower of the Birkenau gate building, looking north.
This 1945 view was published as a postcard shortly after the war. |
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At the north end of each
section of Lager BII was an ornamental garden surrounding a stone well.
These photos show the garden at the end of Lager BIId. The structure in
the distance was a large elevated water tank for the kitchen barracks.
Prisoners were sometimes executed in public near this water tank. (Yad Vashem Collections) |
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On the left is one of several
fire fighting reservoirs on the grounds of the Birkenau camps. These
reservoirs were necessary because there were no water hydrants. The
photo on the right shows the area of the so-called "football
(soccer) pitch" (left of the fence line), a controversial feature
that existed at the south end of Lager BIIf,
near Crematorium III. Hungarian doctor Miklos Nyiszli, who worked in
Birkenau with the SS doctors, reported that the SS guards played soccer once
with the Sonderkommando on the grounds of Crematorium II, and
Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum publications state that this area in Lager BIIf was
also used as a
soccer field. Note the deteriorated condition of some of the concrete
fence posts, which have not yet been repaired. |
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On the left are the foundation
ruins of barracks of Lager BIIf, the men's infirmary. These barracks
were also used by the infamous SS doctor Josef Mengele in his medical
experiments on children (mostly twins), dwarfs, and other individuals.
The Lager BIII section, called "Mexico" by the prisoners, was
on the other side of these deteriorating fence posts on the right. |
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A special part of Lager BII was the BIIg Personal
Effects Depot (Effektenlager), called "Canada" by the
prisoners (BW33). A work assignment to this depot was highly desirable because
the prisoners could generally wear their own clothing and not have their
hair cut, and more importantly, the sorted effects had a lot of food that
the prisoners could secretly consume, considerably raising their
possibility of survival. To the prisoners, the country of Canada was
thought to be a paradise of readily available food, so they transferred
the name to this depot (often called "Canada II" today, to
differentiate it from the similar "Canada
I" depot near the Auschwitz I main camp.)
This depot, built in late 1943, was where the
confiscated personal property of prisoner arrivals in 1944 was sorted.
At times, particularly during the large shipments of Hungarian Jews in
May-June 1944, these 30 barracks were insufficient to hold all the loot,
and piles of clothing and other goods appeared between the barracks,
waiting sorting and storage. The photos above show the entry gate into
"Canada II" on the south side. None of the buildings of
"Canada II" exist today, as the depot was set on fire before
the SS abandoned Birkenau in January 1945, although there is a small
outdoor display of confiscated goods at the site of one of the
buildings. (Yad Vashem Collections) |
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This building, located at the
far end of the "Canada" section, is called the "Sauna"
(BW32). However, its official name was Entwesungsanlage - a
delousing/disinfection facility, and it was no sort of traditional
sauna. This building served the same purpose in Birkenau as the reception
building in the Auschwitz main camp - those prisoners who were
selected as laborers to be admitted to the concentration camp passed
through this facility to be disinfected in showers, their hair was cut,
their clothing was deloused and they were issued camp uniforms and
registered in the system, all in this building. The building presents
largely its original appearance, but some of this is due to
reconstruction work after 1945. (Yad Vashem Collections) |
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Arriving prisoners were
processed through this large hall for registration. (Yad Vashem Collections) |

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The prisoners passed through a hair cutting
room (Haarschneideraum), shower (Brausen),
examination room (Untersuchungsraum), and then picked up disinfected clothing
(Desinfizierte Wäsche), all rooms still labeled today above
their doorways. |
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Above left - Interior of one of the cylindrical
sewage treatment structure ruins. |

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As at the Auschwitz I main camp, the
periphery of the Birkenau camp had one-man air raid shelters for the
guard force to use in emergencies. The shelters faced toward the camp so
that the SS guards could fire at any prisoners who tried to escape
during air attacks. These simple shelters consisted of pre-fab concrete
arches over a hole in the ground, covered with bricks and earth. |

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Down the road from the
"Gate of Death" entry
building, opposite sections BII and BIII, was the Birkenau camp Kommandantur
(headquarters - BW10). The SS Kaserne was directly behind this headquarters
building, which is now a church (not part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau
Museum). The SS barracks complex in the rear was torn down after the
war. (Yad Vashem Collections) (Google
Maps link) |
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Above - Adjacent to the Kommandantur
was a waterworks building (BW35) for the SS Kaserne complex (including the Kommandantur
and SS hospital complex). This building exists as a ruin today. Below -
At the southeast corner of the camp, outside the perimeter, were two Kartoffellagerhalle
potato storage warehouses, similar to those
near the Judenrampe. One of these buildings exists today as a
ruin. (Yad Vashem Collections) |
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Continue to Auschwitz-Birkenau
Part 2 - the ramp selection process and the crematoria and gas chambers
Continue to
Auschwitz III Monowitz and
surrounding labor camps, along with the IG Farben Buna-Werke factory site
Continue to
Auschwitz
"Interest Zone" - SS administrative buildings and
housing, and factory, agricultural, and support sites outside the main camps
Continue to
Judenrampe rail arrival site
Back to Auschwitz I Main Camp
Official Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum Webpage --
http://en.auschwitz.org/m/
Follow these links to visit other Third
Reich in Ruins pages on concentration camp sites
-- Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen,
Nordhausen (Dora), Flossenbürg,
S/III Jonastal, Mauthausen
(includes Gusen), Ebensee (Austria).
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