The documentation included in this publication is based on the extant original records kept by the SS at the Auschwitz concentration camp. They contain entries - 68 864 - with the information about the death of the registered prisoners of Auschwitz in the period from July 27, 1941 to December 31, 1943. It has to be emphasized that this data concerns only a small proportion of the prisoners who died in the Auschwitz camp complex - more than a million Jews deported to Auschwitz in mass transports from all the Nazi-occupied countries of Europe were never registered by name, alive or dead, but were immediately selected at the train ramp for the gas chambers. There are no entries about them in the death books.

Most of the names of prisoners who died in Auschwitz, documentated by the SS administration, have not been published anywhere before and remain a historical source of unique importance.

Volume I, available in English, German or Polish, includes introductory articles and accounts by former prisoners: Tadeusz Paczuła, Hermann Langbein, Kazimierz Smoleń, Israel Gutman, and Shmuel Krakowski.

Volumes II and III contain an alphabetical list of the names of prisoners who were killed or died in the camp, drawn up on the basis of nearly 69,000 death certificates recorded in the camp Registry Office. The Museum recovered these documents from the USSR Central State Archives in 1991-1992.

This publication is available in English, German and Polish.