The Inspector of Concentration Camps
For reasons of war necessity, which need not be specified here, the Reich Leader SS and Chief of the German Police has ordered on 14 December 1942 that at least 35,000 prisoners fit for work are to be committed to the concentration camps before the end of January 1943.
In order to reach this number, the following measures are required:
1. As of now (and for the time being, until 1 February 1943) eastern workers or such foreign workers, who have been fugitives, or who have broken contracts, insofar as they do not belong to allied, friendly, or neutral states, are to be brought by the quickest means to the nearest concentration camps under observance of the simplest formalities listed under No. 3. In order to eliminate or forestall complaints by outside public offices, explanations will be furnished, if required, stating that the measures are essential for reasons of public security on the basis of the facts in the individual cases.
2. The commanders and the commandants of the Security Police and the Security Service, and the Chiefs of the State Police Headquarters will make immediate checks, applying especially rigorous and strict standards, on (a) prisons, and (b) labor correction camps. All prisoners fit for work, if at all possible physically and from a humanitarian aspect, will be committed at once to the nearest concentration camp, according to the following instructions, even if criminal procedures have already been or will be instituted in the near future. Only such prisoners who are to remain in solitary confinement, for investigation purposes, may be left.
By order:
[Signed] Mueller
Certified correct.
[Signed] Hellmuth