The head of the SS camp administration office sent a directive dated Dec. 28, 1942, to Auschwitz and the other concentration camps sharply criticising the high death rate of inmates due to disease, and ordered that "camp physicians must use all means at their disposal to significantly reduce the death rate in the various camps."

Furthermore, it ordered: "The camp doctors must supervise more often than in the past the nutrition of the prisoners and, in cooperation with the administration, submit improvement recommendations to the camp commandants ... The camp doctors are to see to it that the working conditions at the various labor places are improved as much as possible."

Finally, the directive stressed that "the Reichsführer SS [Heinrich Himmler] has ordered that the death rate absolutely must be reduced."