A special camp for Gypsies was established in Birkenau on February 26. Organised in the form of a family camp, it received mostly Gypsies from other concentration camps and smaller numbers of Gypsies from elsewhere in the Reich. Among them were veterans of the Wehrmacht; some arrived in Auschwitz in uniform and with citations in hand. Because of the harsh conditions, the mortality rate in the Gypsies' camp was the highest in any of the Birkenau camps. Some 20,000 Gypsies were interned in the Gypsies' camp; few survived.
