BIRKENAU+AUSCHWITZ+2

The concentration and death camp of Birkenau was the second camp at the Auschwitz complex. It was located in the annexed portion of Poland. The camp was established in October 1942 by the S.S.. Construction on Birkenau began in October 1941 to make it less crowded at the main camp. The Germans intended the camp to house 50,000 prisoners of war, who would be put in terrible condition and were forced into very demanding physical labor. The plans called for the expansion was originally suppose to hold 150,000 and eventually as many as 200,000 inmates. An initial number of 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war arrived at Auschwitz I in October 1941, but by March 1942 only 945 were still alive, and these were transferred to Birkenau, where most of them died from disease or starvation by May. By this time Hitler had decided that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated, so Birkenau was repurposed as a extermination camp. The chief of construction of Birkenau was led by Karl Bischoff. The Birkenau camp, the four crematoria, the technically complicated central sauna, a new reception building, and hundreds of other buildings were planned and realized. Bischoff's plans initially called for each barrack to have an occupancy of 550 prisoners. He later changed this to 744 prisoners per barrack. The SS designed the barracks not so much to house people as to destroy them. The first gas chamber at Birkenau was the "red house", a brick cottage converted into a gassing facility by tearing out the inside and bricking up the walls. It was operational by March 1942. A second brick cottage, the "white house", was established a couple weeks later weeks later. These structures were in use for mass killings until early 1943. Himmler visited the camp in person on July 17 and 18, 1942. He was given a demonstration of a mass killing using the gas chamber in the White House.