Section B II In Birkenau

Located just 3 kilometers from Auschwitz, and in the village of Brzezinka, is the camp Birkenau. This is a huge 425 acre camp dwarfing the Auschwitz main camp in size.  At its peak it contained over 300 buildings and housed 100,000 prisoners. Today 45 brick buildings and 22 wood buildings survive intact. Because of the camp’s size and separate functions the Germans divided it into sections (numbered B IIa to B IIf). The section seen here is part of Sector B II. These were old field stables used to house Roma (or Gypsy) prisoners from February 1943 to August 1944 when the last 3,000 Roma were killed by the SS in Birkenau’s gas chambers. (Picture taken by Steven Mercatante on September 5, 2014).