Following the Act of December 4, 1941, "On criminal justice for Poles and Jews in the incorporated eastern territories", in July 1942 the Police Summary Court (Polizeistandgericht) in Kattowitz was established with authority over the entire Province of Upper Silesia. Its purpose included fighting more serious crimes against the Reich committed by Poles for political and criminal reasons, that were excluded from the competence of common courts. The chairman of the tribunal was always the head of the Gestapo in Kattowitz (SS-Obersturmbannführers Rudolf Mildner, and then Johannes Thümmler). The defendant did not have the right to appeal against the judges' verdicts and the sentences were carried out immediately.

Initially, summary court meetings were held in Kattowitz and the accused were brought there from a substitute police prison in Myslowitz. After the trial, those sentenced to death were delivered to Auschwitz for execution by shooting.

Probably from the end of February 1943, due to the overcrowding of the Myslowitz prison, detainees began to be placed first in Block 2a in Auschwitz I, and then on the ground floor of Block 11. They were there without the status of a camp prisoner, that is, they were not included in the camp population count, they did not receive striped uniforms and were not tattooed with numbers. If necessary, and at the request of the Gestapo, SS-men from the camp Political Department carried out additional ad hoc hearings, beating and torturing the prisoners. Eventually this led to the shortening of the process, because when a Gestapo car arrived from Kattowitz all the formal documents were already prepared and the "trials", sentencing to death, and execution of the sentence could all take place almost immediately.

Immediately after the death sentence was passed, the prisoners were taken to a washroom where they had to undress. They were then led to the courtyard of Block 11, to a black wall of wood panels and particle boards. There, the SS (usually Rapportführer Gerhard Palitzsch) killed them with a shot in the back of the head. The bodies of those murdered were later transported to the camp crematorium to be cremated. In February 1944, the Death Wall was dismantled, and executions were carried out in the vestibule of Crematorium V in Birkenau.

Taking into consideration that most of the camp documents were destroyed, the number of victims of the police summary court cannot be precisely determined. Estimates range from at least 3,000 to about 4,000 people, men and women.

In addition, groups of Poles brought to the camp for the sole purpose of execution were also killed in Auschwitz. In the testimonies of witnesses they are referred to as "hostages" or "partisans" (i.e. members of the resistance movement). They were shot in the former gravel pits near Auschwitz I, at the Death Wall in the courtyard of Block 11, or included in groups of Jews selected for extermination in gas chambers. Their number, due to the almost complete absence of relevant documentation, is impossible to determine (although it is probably several thousand).