An account of the development of Auschwitz during the war - as a concentration camp, and as a site of economic activity. Challenging the popular image of Auschwitz as a sealed-off space, an isolated centre of unimaginable horror, Frei reminds us that it was located on territory fully integrated into the German Reich before 1945. The ever-expanding complex of camps, factories etc. thus became home to thousands of SS men and their families, and also to German administrators, planners businessmen and others