The first trains carrying Jews arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau in March 1942. Often several trains arrived daily carrying Jews from almost every country in Europe.Each of the trains carried in excess of a thousand victims. Prisoners had been packed into cattle wagons with no room to sit, no food and two buckets: one for water and another to use as a toilet. The journey could last days on end, with the prisoners not knowing where they were passing through or where they were going. Many victims died during the journey as a result of suffocation, illness or hunger.Initially, arrivals at Auschwitz-Birkenau would be unloaded on a ramp alongside the main railway lines at Oświęcim. The prisoners would then walk the short distance to the camp. However, in preparation for the arrival of 440,000 Hungarian Jews during the spring of 1944, railway tracks were laid right into the camp, through the now infamous gatehouse building.