This volume deals in an exemplary manner with the involvement of private German enterprises in the National Socialist policy of extermination. It focuses primarily on the activities of the company "IG Farben" in the neighbourhood of Auschwitz and on the concentration camp Monowitz, built in co-operation with the SS. It investigates not only the motives of the "IG Farben" managers and the alternatives open to them, but also the 'everyday life' of prisoners used forced labour -- more than 25,000 of whom died.