The SS authorities had started to form plans for exploitation of the Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) in Auschwitz concentration camp before the German attack on the Soviet Union. In March 1941 the construction of a camp for 100 thousand Soviet POWs was assigned within 3 km from Oswiecim (German: Auschwitz) near the Polish village Brzezinka (German: Birkenau) on Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler’s approval and with the purpose of using the prisoners for forced labor. In the middle of 1942 the decision to increase the camp’s capacity to 200 thousand people was made. Although these plans had never been implemented, Birkenau construction documents of 1944 continued to bear the inscription ‘prisoners of war camp’.
After the outbreak of Germany’s war against the Soviet Union Auschwitz concentration camp also became an extermination site for politically hostile categories of the Soviet POWs pursuant to R. Heydrich’s (Director of the Reich Main Security Office - RSHA) decree № 8 ‘On the treatment of the Soviet prisoners of war’ from the 17th of July, 1941.