Most of the documents were created on the basis of information given orally or copied from other documents. Not only may the documents contain misspellings, they can also contain other mistakes – both deliberate and unintentional. The documents from concentration camps are a special case: information given on the time and circumstances of death should always be viewed critically. In order to conceal their crimes, the SS used standardized terminology for describing the various causes of death. They covered up executions and “euthanasia“ or the fact that hunger, disease, forced labor, catastrophic hygienic conditions and medical experiments often led to death. Information on the time of death can also be contradictory: when people died in the sub-camps, their death was not recorded on the lists in the concentration camps until some days later.