DIA 18 - OSWIECIM - AUSCHWITZ II: BIRKENAU http://en.auschwitz.org.pl/h/ At first the train station near the small village of Hooghalen was used. That station was about a 3.1 mi (5 km) walk from the camp. The unfortunate inmates were made to walk, guarded by police, to and from the railway station in Hooghalen until the new line connecting the station at Hooghalen with the camp was completed. When the single track leading into the camp finally was completed in November 1942, deportations were organized from within the camp itself. More than 40 sub-camps, exploiting the prisoners as slave laborers, were founded, mainly at various sorts of German industrial plants and farms, between 1942 and 1944. The largest of them was called Buna (Monowitz, with ten thousand prisoners) and was opened by the camp administration in 1942 on the grounds of the Buna-Werke synthetic rubber and fuel plant six kilometers from the Auschwitz camp. On November 1943, the Buna sub-camp became the seat of the commandant of the third part of the camp, Auschwitz III, to which some other Auschwitz sub-camps were subordinated.