The idea of setting up transit camps in Birkenau originated in the spring of 1944, with the prospects of deporting approximately 700,000 Jews from Hungary to the Reich. The government in Budapest had previously long managed to resist this, but the Regent of Hungary, Miklós Horthy, did not find enough courage to oppose German demands and agreed to start the deportation.

From the start it was obvious to the SS organisers of the campaign (Adolf Eichmann’s so-called Sondereinsatzkommando) that although there would be plenty of workers coveted by the economy, there were also a great many sick, women with small children and the elderly, whom the German authorities considered unnecessary ballast. That is why they recognised that this required the selection of Hungarian Jews, and they murdered all those unfit for work, as had been done previously with other groups of Jews. Thus, the only solution available was to send them to Auschwitz, the last death camp that at the time still operated huge gas chambers and crematoria.

The killing of the Jews did not mean a solution of all the “problems” the SS had. The nearby industrial plants in Upper Silesia might have highlighted the need to increase inmate employment, yet not to the extent to absorb and productively employ over a hundred thousand new workers. For this reason, many Jews selected for work were intended to be moved systematically to other camps and factories situated deep in the Third Reich. Therefore their time in Auschwitz was destined to be short, and not to exceed several weeks. That is why the SS command resigned from running them through the tedious registration procedures, tattooing numbers, and issuing striped clothing. They, however, had to remain in separate sections of the camp, isolated from the other inmates.

From mid-May to early July 1944, the Germans managed to transport approximately 420,000 Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz. Of that number, the majority were murdered in the gas chambers immediately on arrival, while the remaining 100,000 were systematically taken to transit camps: BIIc, a section of BIIe, and BIII. As foreseen, men selected for work were usually successfully removed from Auschwitz after a few weeks’ stay, while the women would often remain in Birkenau for many months, as the industrial demand for them was lower.

Living conditions in the transit camps were catastrophic, even by the standards of Birkenau: due to the lack of bunk beds, female inmates slept directly on the clay floors of the barracks, without access to running water, dirty, in their torn clothing. Therefore, the high mortality rate among those female inmates, caused mostly by the endless selections for the gas chambers, cannot be surprising.