Combining legal, social, & political history, this article contributes to a more thorough understanding of the changing relationship between Nazi concentration camps as places of extra-legal terror & the judiciary, between Nazi terror & the law. It is argued the conflict between the judiciary & the SS was not a conflict between good & evil but rather a power struggle for jurisdiction over the camps. Concentration camp authorities covered up the murders of prisoners as suicide to prevent judicial investigations. This article also examines actual suicides in the pre-war camps to highlight individual inmates’ reactions to life within the camps. (97 notes) JA