Lemberg-Janowska Forced Labor Camp

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Coordinates: 49 ° 51 ′ 15 ″  N , 23 ° 59 ′ 18 ″  E

Forced labor camp Lemberg-Janowska (Europe)
Forced labor camp Lemberg-Janowska
Forced labor
camp Lemberg-Janowska
Localization of Ukraine in Ukraine
Lemberg-Janowska Forced Labor Camp
Lemberg-Janowska Forced Labor Camp in Ukraine

The Janowska concentration camp in Lvov was in November 1941 by the SS in the district of Galicia in German-occupied Poland erected. Later it was used as a “multifunctional transit warehouse ”. Many of the mostly Jewish prisoners of Eastern European and Soviet origin were from there to other forced labor camps deported , for the Belzec extermination camp selected or shot on location in the sand hills behind the camp. This is why the Janowska camp is sometimes referred to as an extermination camp . On July 19, 1944, the Janowska camp was dissolved by the SS.

Creation of the forced labor camp

In September 1941, the German occupiers took over the factory premises at Janowska-Strasse 132-134 (today: Shevchenko-Strasse ( Вулиця Шевченка )) from Lemberg and initially set up a supply company for the Wehrmacht there. Before the occupation, the building belonged to a Jew named Steinhaus.

A short time later, the camp became part of the German Equipment Works (DAW), an SS company (to Amt W under the direction of Oswald Pohl in the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA)). Forced labor was initially used for the production there. In the late autumn of 1941 part of the site was separated as the "Lemberg-Janowska Forced Labor Camp" and managed by the DAW operations manager, SS-Hauptsturmführer Fritz Gebauer, as the camp leader.

Since the occupation on June 30, 1941, there had been a large assembly camp in Lviv, which the SS called the Jewish residential district of Lemberg .

expansion

From left to right: Friedrich Warzok , Fritz Katzmann and Heinrich Himmler in the Lemberg-Janowska forced labor camp

At the beginning of May 1942, Friedrich Katzmann ordered the Janowska camp to be expanded on the adjacent site and to accommodate 10,000 prisoners. On July 1, 1942, Gustav Willhaus became the commandant of the Janowska forced labor camp, which he managed until June 1943 and which was separated from the DAW operations. In March 1943 the camp had a women's section with 400 Jewish women; in March 1943 the camp reached its highest occupancy with up to 15,000 prisoners. Even if up to 10% Polish and Ukrainian prisoners were temporarily housed, this was primarily a “Jewish camp” as part of the so-called “ Final Solution to the Jewish Question ”.

living conditions

There was a lack of hygienic and basic medical care. The barracks were unheated and extremely primitive. The diet was inadequate, especially since ten hours of hard physical work were required six days a week. In addition, there was a constant threat of "selections" and brutal attacks, in which the commander took part.

The average lifespan of concentration camp inmates in the camp was no more than three months, unless they were spared as prisoner functionaries or because of special skilled workers. The beneficiaries of the forced labor camp were German companies and Wehrmacht and armaments factories in Lviv.

Transit camp

Janowska was also used as a transit camp and as a distribution point for fifteen other forced labor camps that were set up for the construction of the military thoroughfare IV from Przemyśl via Lviv and Tarnopol to the Ukraine.

During the mass deportations to the Belzec extermination camp , Janowska became the last stopover for many Jews from June 1942 before their murder: Here the victims were selected and only a few were retained for forced labor.

In 1943 Janowska, which was also still a labor camp, also became an extermination camp itself . Newcomers were usually taken straight to the murder sites in the sand hills near the camp and shot there. By mid-May 1943, more than 6,000 Jews had been murdered in this way. From July 1943 Friedrich Warzok was camp manager; the guards consisted of around 50 Reich and ethnic German SS men.

The Janowska forced labor camp initially resembled many concentration camps in the rest of the German sphere of influence, in which the prisoners were exploited for extermination through work or selected for extermination. In addition, Janowska became an extermination camp; there were mass shootings there , but no gas chambers . SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel was entrusted with covering up the traces of the murder and in June 1943 put together a command of 70 police officers from Police Regiment 23 to guard around 130 Jewish prisoners, who had to exhume the corpses and burn them at the stake. In Janowska, SD and SiPo officials from the General Government were also trained for such actions . Leon Weliczker was one of the Jewish inmates of the Enterdungskommando , who kept a diary and was able to escape from the camp in a group in November 1943.

Warehouse liquidation

Former forced laborers from Sonderaktion 1005 demonstrate how a bone mill works (August 1944).

Almost all of the forced laborers who belonged to Janowska external detachments were shot on October 25, 1943. Only one work detachment that was assigned to the “earthworks” was spared. In the camp itself on 19./20. November 1943 around 4,000 Jewish prisoners murdered after a mass escape attempt; this is interpreted as part of the “ harvest festival ”.

In the following weeks the camp was again occupied with several hundred Polish, Ukrainian and ethnic German prisoners, until it was evacuated on July 19, 1944 before the advancing Red Army and the prisoners were deported to camps located to the west. Simon Wiesenthal was among them .

Casualty numbers

The sources make it impossible to determine the exact number of victims for the Janowska concentration camp. The estimated figures are far apart. Early information suggests that a total of 300,000 to 400,000 Jews passed through the camp, of which 200,000 were murdered. Other estimates put a total of 50,000 victims. The historian Thomas Sandkühler believes it is likely that there were more victims in the camp than in the Majdanek concentration camp : this would be significantly more than 50,000.

literature

  • Waitman Wade Beorn: Last Stop in Lwów: Janowska as a Hybrid Camp. In: Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 32, 2018, issue 3, pp. 445–471.
  • Dieter Pohl : National Socialist Persecution of Jews in East Galicia, 1941–1944. Oldenbourg, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-486-56233-9 .
  • Thomas Sandkühler : Final solution in Galicia. The murder of Jews in Eastern Poland and the rescue initiatives of Berthold Beitz 1941–1944 . Dietz successor, Bonn 1996, ISBN 3-8012-5022-9 .
  • Leon W. Wells : A son of Job. Translated from d. Engl. By H. Th. Asbeck. C. Hanser, Munich 1963.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Israel Gutman et al. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. 2nd edition Munich 1998, ISBN 3-492-22700-7 , vol. 2, p. 657. / deathcamps: Janowska
  2. ^ Filip Friedmann: The annihilation of the Lemberg Jews. In: Frank Beer, Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): After the downfall. The first evidence of the Shoah in Poland 1944–1947. Reports of the Central Jewish Historical Commission, pp. 27–64, here: p. 55.
  3. ↑ Thomas Sandkühler: 'Final Solution' in Galicia. Bonn 1996. ISBN 3-8012-5022-9 , pp. 185, 434.
  4. ↑ occasionally incorrectly written as Wilhaus - s. however sand cooler p. 435f.
  5. ↑ Thomas Sandkühler: 'Final Solution' in Galicia. P. 589.
  6. ↑ Thomas Sandkühler: 'Final Solution' in Galicia. P. 190.
  7. ↑ Thomas Sandkühler: 'Final Solution' in Galicia. Pp. 186/187.
  8. ↑ Thomas Sandkühler: 'Final Solution' in Galicia. Pp. 132, 587.
  9. ^ Gutman: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Vol. 2, pp. 657f.
  10. ↑ Jens Hoffmann: “You can't tell that” - “Aktion 1005” - How the Nazis removed the traces of their mass murders in Eastern Europe. Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-930786-53-4 , p. 93.
  11. ↑ Thomas Sandkühler: 'Final Solution' in Galicia. P. 270.
  12. ↑ Thomas Sandkühler: 'Final Solution' in Galicia. P. 191.