An Introduction to the Janowska camp

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The Janowska concentration camp or Zwangsarbeitslager-Lemberg  (ZAL-L) was first established on the outskirts of Lviv, Ukraine  in November 1941.  It was initially part of the Deutsche-Ausrüstungswerke system of  factory labor camps designed to produce materials for the German war effort.  It is has been almost completely understudies in a rigorous manner and so this project is of historical significance.  It is also the topic of Dr. Beorn's second monograph.

 

The Janowska camp distinguished itself from other Nazi concentration sites in several ways.[1]  First, it simultaneously performed three tasks: the concentration and use of slave labor, the transport of Jews to the extermination centers, and the local killing of Jews from Lviv on an unprecedented scale.  Second, it was urban, located in the city of Lviv.  Third, it formed the hub of a social network of perpetrators who left the camp to preside over the Holocaust in camps and ghettos throughout the region before returning. Fourth, it became the focal point of the second longest Nazi trial in German history.  Fifth, it generated extensive sources including survivor testimony/memoirs, legal statements, photos, artwork, maps, and portions of the site are still extant today.  Lastly, the SS-men of the camp murdered at least 80,000 Jews, a death toll which surpasses Majdanek—a camp included by some as an extermination center. While Janowska was not an extermination center like the Operation Reinhard camps, it was a dedicated, continuously operational killing site whose death toll raises its profile above most other camps who participated in dedicated killing operations.

 

[1] Note: The “Janowska camp” was actually two separate but side by side organizations: the Zwangsarbeitslager-Lemberg, ZAL-L (Forced Labor Camp) and the DeutscheAusrüstungswerk, DAW (German Equipment Factory). These sites were intimately connected but also demonstrated significant differences.