It is exceptionally difficult to find any mentions of a prior intention to apply special, worse treatment of Jews in the SS documents. These usually refer to “inmates” (Häftlinge), all of whom must obey the same rules and regulations. In 429 written orders of the highest-ranking officers: commandants of individual sections in Auschwitz, the SS garrison, and the commander of the guard crew, there is only one mention that Jews should be given ‘special treatment’, and its comes from the successor to Höss, Commandant Arthur Liebehenschel. In January 1944, he ordered that heavier physical labour be performed by Jewish women, and German women (possibly also other “Aryan” female inmates) were to be given office work in heated premises. He also mentioned, which seems of key importance for the understanding of the phenomenon, that the status quo should automatically be understandable for everyone, which means that no one needed any special instruction that Jews should be treated worse. The fact that Jews deserve worse treatment was obvious and anyone in the SS should be familiar with that.

Indeed, Jewish female inmates were employed in many divisions of the administration, especially the ones that knew German fluently and had experience of working in an office. Yet it should be doubted that Germans were sent to hard construction labour (perhaps with the exception of a very few female Germans, so-called “correctional prisoners”). As a rule, any German inmate, even the least competent, could count on receiving a less demanding role in Auschwitz: a Kapo’s assistant, block elder, etc.

A testimony to SS staff being particular about what type of inmates they were supervising is the scrupulous reporting of the number of Jews in reports on headcounts in the camp. Not only were the inmates assigned to individual categories: political, asocial, and others, but in reports they were also listed according to nationality: Poles, Russians, Germans, Czechs, etc., and obviously Jews; very often also according to the country of origin.

Even when inmates were mentioned in a very general fashion in official correspondence, attempts were made to distinguish at least between “Aryans” and Jews. The latter were usually mentioned in negative contexts, as less efficient at work, and suggestions to replace them with other inmates on a given position were made. Nonetheless, such mentions in SS documents, resulting from racist, anti-Semitic bias, occur far less often than might be expected.

Information about the inmates of the camp being Jewish can more often be found in the files of the companies that used their labour for local industrial plants (mines, metal works). In practice, these were Jews (especially in 1944) who were sent to the local sub-camps and provided the majority of their residents.

This probably happened for a number of reasons. First, because Himmler believed that Jews should generally be transferred from the camps within the “Old Reich” to the east, that is, primarily to Auschwitz.

Secondly, later, beginning in the spring of 1943, German companies began to request inmate labour from Auschwitz. These were Jews, arriving in mass transports, who were available in large numbers.

Thirdly, the command of the camp probably believed that inmates in isolated units will find it easier to establish illegal and strictly forbidden contacts with local people, particularly Polish people, in the area. But it was believed that it would be more difficult for Jews to make such contacts.

Whatever the reason, it is a fact that Jews were the dominant national group among the inmates of Auschwitz sub-camps in the summer of 1944.

It can therefore be guessed that the situation in which there was such a large number of Jews in the sub-camps was intended by the SS, and resulted from the fact that on average work in the sub-camps was harder than that of inmates in the main camps. Nonetheless, the conditions in different sub-camps certainly varied; a claim that is however true only in reference to certain companies employing inmates, primarily the coal mines and the SS management of the stone quarry in Goleszów. On the other hand, wherever the inmates remained in locked factory halls, that is, under a roof, in the sub-camps and where they operated machines instead of heavy physical labour, and could sleep in heated premises and use the plants’ baths, the conditions were significantly better than in the Auschwitz and Birkenau construction work Kommandos.