Editing Auschwitz concentration camp (section)

===Women's camp{{anchor|Women's camp}}===
{{See also|Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz}}
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| image1 = Female prisoners at Birkenau.jpg
| caption1 = Women in Auschwitz II, May 1944
| image2 = Roll call at Birkenau.jpg
| caption2 = Roll call in front of the kitchen building, Auschwitz II
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About 30 percent of the registered inmates were female.{{sfn|Strzelecka|2000c|p=171}} The first mass transport of women, 999 non-Jewish German women from the [[Ravensbrück concentration camp]], arrived on 26 March 1942. Classified as criminal, asocial and political, they were brought to Auschwitz as founder functionaries of the women's camp.{{sfn|Czech|2000|pp=143–144}} Rudolf Höss wrote of them: "It was easy to predict that these beasts would mistreat the women over whom they exercised power&nbsp;... Spiritual suffering was completely alien to them."{{sfn|Strzelecka|2000c|p=177}} They were given serial numbers 1–999.{{sfn|Czech|2000|p=144}}{{efn|This was the third set of serial numbers started in the camp.<ref name=serialUSHHM/>}} The women's guard from Ravensbrück, [[Johanna Langefeld]], became the first Auschwitz women's camp ''Lagerführerin''.{{sfn|Czech|2000|pp=143–144}} A second mass transport of women, 999 Jews from [[Poprad]], Slovakia, arrived on the same day. According to [[Danuta Czech]], this was the first registered transport sent to Auschwitz by the [[Reich Security Head Office]] (RSHA) office IV B4, known as the Jewish Office, led by SS ''Obersturmbannführer'' [[Adolf Eichmann]].{{sfn|Czech|2000|p=144}} (Office IV was the [[Gestapo]].){{sfn|Stangneth|2014|p=22}} A third transport of 798 Jewish women from [[Bratislava]], Slovakia, followed on 28 March.{{sfn|Czech|2000|p=144}}

Women were at first held in blocks 1–10 of Auschwitz I,{{sfn|Strzelecka|2000c|p=172}} but from 6 August 1942,{{sfn|Czech|2000|p=155}} 13,000 inmates were transferred to a new women's camp (''Frauenkonzentrationslager'' or FKL) in Auschwitz II. This consisted at first of 15 brick and 15 wooden barracks in sector (''Bauabschnitt'') BIa; it was later extended into BIb,{{sfn|Strzelecka|2000c|pp=172–173}} and by October 1943 it held 32,066 women.{{sfn|Strzelecka|Setkiewicz|2000|p=88}} In 1943–1944, about 11,000 women were also housed in the [[#Gypsy family camp|Gypsy family camp]], as were several thousand in the [[#Theresienstadt family camp|Theresienstadt family camp]].{{sfn|Strzelecka|2000c|p=174}}

Conditions in the women's camp were so poor that when a group of male prisoners arrived to set up an infirmary in October 1942, their first task, according to researchers from the Auschwitz Museum, was to distinguish the corpses from the women who were still alive.{{sfn|Strzelecka|Setkiewicz|2000|p=88}} [[Gisella Perl]], a Romanian-Jewish gynecologist and inmate of the women's camp, wrote in 1948:
{{blockquote|There was one latrine for thirty to thirty-two thousand women and we were permitted to use it only at certain hours of the day. We stood in line to get in to this tiny building, knee-deep in human excrement. As we all suffered from dysentry, we could barely wait until our turn came, and soiled our ragged clothes, which never came off our bodies, thus adding to the horror of our existence by the terrible smell that surrounded us like a cloud. The latrine consisted of a deep ditch with planks thrown across it at certain intervals. We squatted on those planks like birds perched on a telegraph wire, so close together that we could not help soiling one another.<ref>{{harvnb|Perl|1948|pp=32–33}}; {{harvnb|van Pelt|1998|p=133}}.</ref>}}

Langefeld was succeeded as ''Lagerführerin'' in October 1942 by SS ''Oberaufseherin'' [[Maria Mandl]], who developed a reputation for cruelty. Höss hired men to oversee the female supervisors, first SS ''Obersturmführer'' Paul Müller, then SS ''Hauptsturmführer'' [[Franz Hössler]].{{sfn|Strzelecka|2000c|p=176}} Mandl and Hössler were executed after the war. Sterilisation experiments were carried out in barracks 30 by a German gynecologist, [[Carl Clauberg]], and another German doctor, [[Horst Schumann]].{{sfn|Strzelecka|Setkiewicz|2000|p=88}}