This volume deals in an exemplary manner with the involvement of private German enterprises in the National Socialist policy of extermination. It focuses primarily on the activities of the company "IG Farben" in the neighbourhood of Auschwitz and on the concentration camp Monowitz, built in co-operation with the SS. It investigates not only the motives of the "IG Farben" managers and the alternatives open to them, but also the 'everyday life' of prisoners used forced labour -- more than 25,000 of whom died.

This volume documents the internal orders given by SS camp commanders to the guards of Auschwitz. Issued as hectographs, very few orders survived, scattered through German, Polish and Russian archives and have been largely disregarded by researchers until now. However, the sheer abundance of detail they offer renders them both an impressive witness to 'every day life' of the SS at the very scene of mass extermination and a significant source for the history of the Holocaust.

This volume contains contributions on selected aspects of camp policy in the 'Third Reich'. Aided by the opening of Eastern European archives, new questions and research perspectives have been presented, ranging from the structure of the 'society of prisoners' and the conditions of the policy of systematic extermination in the occupied East to the awareness of these crimes within the German society.