In the summer of 1942, there was an illusory liberalization of the treatment of captured political officers. On 10 June, the Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller issued an order on the segregation of prisoners and ordered that commissars be isolated from the rest of the prisoners and sent to Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. However, this did not change the plight of commissars much, as Mauthausen was one of the worst Nazi concentration camps where they usually waited for a slow death. On 20 October 1942, Müller again ordered commissars captured in battle to be shot on the spot. Only those commissars who were identified as deserters were sent to Mauthausen. In the following months, reports continued to be filed regarding the executions of Soviet commissars. The last known account of the liquidation of a political officer came from units of Army Group South in July 1943.