News
Barracks at Auschwitz II-Birkenau Site To Undergo Conservation
Sept. 14 Oświęcim (PAP – Polish Press Agency) – Preparations are underway for preservation work on some of the prisoner barracks at the site of the German Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp
Ten brick barracks in sectors BIa and BIb have been placed off limits to visitors. Preservation experts have already completed extensive examinations to determine the condition of the buildings. The renovation will begin next spring, Rafał Pióro, head of the Preservation Department of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, told PAP today.
Examinations indicate that the barracks are in varying states of repair. However, they all require conservation, especially after last year's extremely cold and snowy winter. This winter, the Museum will attempt to secure all the necessary permissions for the remodeling work, which it will finance from its own resources.
Auschwitz II-Birkenau
The Germans began building the Birkenau camp at the end of 1941 in the village of Brzezinka, from which the Polish residents had been expelled. Several thousand Soviet POWs died, mainly of exposure and starvation, during the construction of the first sector of the camp, known as BIb (Bauabschnitt Ib – building sector Ib). March 1, 1942 is accepted as the date when Auschwitz II-Birkenau began functioning.
Sector BIb functioned for over a year as the men's concentration camp (Männerkonzentrationslager), originally operated as an integral part of the Auschwitz I administration. The first, or one of the first transports of prisoners sent to Birkenau without passing through Auschwitz I was a train carrying 1,112 Jewish men deported from Compiegne, France on March 30, 1942.
Sector BIb functioned as the men's camp until July 1943. The men were then transferred to sector BIId, and the vacated barracks assigned to women prisoners.
BIa was the second Birkenau sector to be opened. About 13 thousand women, transferred from Auschwitz I, were imprisoned there beginning in the first half of August 1942. The sector operated as the women's concentration camp (Frauenkonzentrationslager).
After the transfer of the men to sector BIId in July 1943, the women's camp was expanded to include sector BIb. In the latter half of that year, the population of the women's camp rose to approximately 30 thousand.
