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.