BIIb
(German: Bauabschnitt IIb – construction segment 2, sector b)
One of the nine camps built by the Germans in Birkenau, assigned for Jews from the ghetto in Theresienstadt, probably set up for propaganda purposes. Prisoners of this camp mailed censored correspondence with mandatory content imposed by the Nazis in an effort to deceive relatives left behind in the ghetto about the nature of deportation.
As in the Zigeunerlager (BIIe), whole families of deportees were placed in the camp; the men, however, were quartered apart from the women and children. Other living conditions were the same as in other camps—hunger, beatings, hard labor, and limited access to water.
Out of the total of about 46,000 people deported from the ghetto to Auschwitz, the SS registered about 18,000 of them in the camp. After the first selection in the camp in March 1944, nearly 3,800 men, women, and children were murdered in the gas chambers. The camp was liquidated in July 1944 when, after another selection, about 3,000 men and women were sent to other camps and the remaining 7,000 killed in the gas chambers.