Polish Killing & Atrocity Centers

Lvov Poland had been for centuries a center point of Jewish Life in Poland. The events in Lvov are synonymous with the events of Janowska, for the slave labor and killings of Lvov took place at Janowska, a factory/camp which became a system of slave-labor factories-camps. Piaski Ravine, just north of the Camp was the site of repeated mass executions and burials. Both a processing camp as well as a killing center, Janowska received Jewish inmates from Lvov and the region of Galicia. Along with such camps as Plaszow, inmates were used for the gruesome cover-up of the events of Operation Reinhard, in which hundreds of thousands of Jews and others were executed in a short period of time in Poland. "Death Brigaders" were sonderkommandos whose job included operation of a 'bone-crunching' machine and huge bonfires to erase traces of the remains of the victims of mass killings from the public.(See Aktion 1005) Becoming a part of the German Armaments Works (Deutsche Ausrustungswerke) carpentry and metal workers were enslaved for the Nazi war effort and killed when their usefulness was expired. Existing in 1941, as the factory on Janowska Street in northeast Lvov, barracks were added in October. Most processed through Janowska went to their immediate deaths in Belzec. Tens of thousands were killed either in the Ravine or later in Belzec, many from the closing of the Lvov Ghetto in 1942. November 1943 saw an escape attempt in which 6000 Jews were murdered by the SS. Janowska was one of the centers that suffered selections, long appells, and brutality, but one of the cruelest mark of the camp was by Rokita, a former violinist and guard, who forced the musicians to form an orchestra, write a piece called, "Tango funtoyt" (Tango of Death) and play it as victims were put to death. The small orchestra was later also put to death. The Camp was liquidated in 1943, but the area did not see liberation until the middle of 1944 when it came under Soviet occupation.