Slaves for the Reich

Abstract This chapter uses the ITS documents to show how the Gross-Rosen and Auschwitz sub-camps functioned and the roles they played in the context of the German economy, the concentration camp system, and the Holocaust. Examining the sub-camps not only brings to light an under-appreciated aspect of the Nazi camp system, showing its significance for the German war economy and for our understanding of Nazi ideology; it also allows us, through the ITS documents, to follow the trajectories of individual persecutes through the camps. Looking at the Holocaust ‘from the bottom up’ means we can appreciate the extent to which some victims were moved around and the ways in which the Nazis’ desperate search for labour towards the end of the war facilitated some camp inmates’ survival.