Three hundred Jews from Os"wiecim were forced to work on the construction of the camp. During the first period, most of them were Polish political prisoners. "On March 1, 1941, the prison population was 10,900 most of it still Polish". (Gutman107).
People knew Auschwitz as the harshest of the Nazi concentration camps. The Nazi system of torturing prisoners was to do cruel things to them. They used one of the camp's building which they called "Block11" for the harsh punishment. There was a special bunker erected there. "The Black Wall" in the front of that building, where the normal execution of prisoners were held. And at the camp's gate, there was a large seal which said " " Arbeit macht frei" (Work leads to freedom)" (Gutman107).
In March 1941, Himmler who was the head of the SS and German police ordered to a second section of the camp to be built, which was much larger than the first one, and were located 1.9 miles from the original camp. It was called "Auschwitz II- Birkenau, built on farmland surrounded by beautiful birch trees. Birkenau was divided into nine subunits, each isolated form others by electrically charged barbed-wire fences" (Berenbaum 134). In the same year, "intensive work on the construction of barracks and other camp installation started in Auschwitz II" (Gutman). "In the gas chamber of Auschwitz II , the Nazi killed Jews and others victims with prussic acid gas, known by its commercial name, "Zyklon B." it was a regular and highly poisonous. Most concentration camps used this gas to kill rats or fly then the Nazi began to used it with human in September 1941, gassing continued until January 1945. (Berenbaum).
A Frauenabteilung (Women's section) was established in the Auschwitz I in March 1942 than it was moved on to a section of Birkenau in August 16, 1942. The first group of women to be the prison in the section in Auschwitz I were 999 German women and same number of Jewish women from Poprad.