—
Surviving wooden barrack in the former women's camp;
foundations and chimneys of destroyed barracks beyond.
© 2026 Bryan R. Hinton
Sector BIa was the women's camp. Halina Birenbaum arrived at the Alte Judenrampe in the summer of 1943 — the freight ramp that served the whole camp complex, located between Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II–Birkenau. From there she was sent directly into Birkenau, and spent her two-week quarantine in block 15 of this sector — one wooden barrack among many. The meadow adjacent to these barracks is where women were driven out daily; from it, Birenbaum could see the chimney of crematorium II smoking in the distance, a few dozen yards beyond the wire. Most of the wooden barracks that stood in this sector are gone. The foundations and brick chimneys visible beyond the surviving barrack in the photograph are what remains of them.
Halina Birenbaum, Hope Is the Last to Die (Oświęcim: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2017).
