Extension:Ex-4.1-3
Labor Camps (German:Zwangsarbeitslager) were installations located throughout parts of Europe under direct German administration in which unpaid conscript laborers (essentially slaves) performed skilled or unskilled tasks for state-run and private military and civilian enterprises and infrastructure projects. In the Generalgouvernement Jews became subject to forced labor conscription by order of the head of the administration, Hans Frank, on 26 October 1939. The SS (a powerful Nazi agency that controlled police functions throughout German and German-controlled territory) was charged with implementing the instruction. Consequently, it procured and supplied workers for numerous German industrial plants. Because the SS also effectively controlled mass-killing operations beginning in 1941, labor camps figured significantly as vehicles for the destruction of Polish (including Galician) Jewry.
In Distrikt Krakau the largest labor camp was Płaszów, located on the outskirts of Kraków. Several labor camps, including Monowitz, a facility built for the German chemical concern IG Farben, were attached administratively to the Auschwitz concentration camp, located in what had been part of Galicia under Austrian rule. A large labor camp in Distrikt Galizien was erected for the SS-owned German Armament Works on Janowska Road, northwest of Lviv, in September 1941. Smaller camps were established throughout both districts.
It is not known how many Jews passed through the labor camps. Mortality was extremely high. Often exhausted workers were transported to killing centers.