AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU

A sub-camp and farm founded at the turn of 1944/1945 in the village of Pławy (German: Plawy). Earlier, from the spring of 1944, Kommandos from Birkenau, which was nearby, worked the fields there. Several new barracks were erected in November alongside the barns and two stables. In the first days of January 1945, about 200 women prisoners, mostly Russians and Hungarian Jews, were quartered in one barracks, and about 140 men prisoners—Russians, Poles, and Slovakian Jews—in the other. These barracks and the outbuildings of the sub-camp were separated by additional barbed-wire fencing.

Women prisoners fed and milked about 100 cows, cleaned the farmyard and carried fertilizer away, and sifted clamped potatoes and beets for fodder. The men prisoners tended to 70 to 80 horses, the transport of crops, and the delivery of milk to the camp dairy. They had 25 carts at their disposal. SS Aufseherin Florentin Cichon was director of the women’s part of the sub-camp, and an NCO with the rank of SS-Oberscharführer, whose name is not known, headed the men’s section. On January 18 the prisoners were evacuated on foot to Wodzisław Śląski, and then transported by rail into the depths of Germany.

Source: Auschwitz from A to Z. An Illustrated History