Janowska was a forced-labor camp for Jews in German-occupied Poland. It also served as a transit camp during the mass deportations of Polish Jews to the killing centers in 1942.
![Janowska environs [LCID: jan42020]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/a3b53ac3-48fc-4078-b8f0-f9b1e17e7eae.gif "Janowska environs [LCID: jan42020]")
![Janowska labor camp, fall 1942 [LCID: jan22030]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/facbe111-77fa-45f5-bebf-65fae48d4383.gif "Janowska labor camp, fall 1942 [LCID: jan22030]")
![SS Second Lieutenant Gustav Willhaus, camp commandant, rides past the main gate of the Janowska concentration camp. [LCID: 69974]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/40145127-7913-41dc-b164-20557ccf0a27.jpg "SS Second Lieutenant Gustav Willhaus, camp commandant, rides past the main gate of the Janowska concentration camp. [LCID: 69974]")
SS Second Lieutenant Gustav Willhaus, camp commandant, rides past the main gate of the Janowska concentration camp. The road from the street and into the camp was paved with tombstones the Nazis removed from Jewish cemeteries. Janowska, Poland, between September 1942 and November 1943.
Item View![Two SS officers and a guard dog in the Janowska concentration camp. [LCID: 69984]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/dccb1375-c8b8-4aad-86b9-702b2f59cddd.jpg "Two SS officers and a guard dog in the Janowska concentration camp. [LCID: 69984]")
Two SS officers and a guard dog in the Janowska concentration camp. Janowska, Poland, January 1942–November 1943.
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Bone-crushing machine used by Sonderkommando 1005 to grind the bones of victims after their bodies were burned in the Janowska camp. August 1944.
Item View![Shoes of victims in the Janowska camp were found by Soviet forces after the liberation of Lvov. [LCID: 85615]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/945a0d9a-ca9a-4bcd-8cbf-89bc2b8e7852.jpg "Shoes of victims in the Janowska camp were found by Soviet forces after the liberation of Lvov. [LCID: 85615]")
Shoes of victims in the Janowska camp were found by Soviet forces after the liberation of Lvov. Janowska, Poland, August 1944.
Item ViewFelix was born to an assimilated Jewish family in Lublin, Poland. His father was a locksmith and his mother was a singer. Following the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, Felix fled east to Rovno and then to Soviet-occupied Lvov, where he was accepted at a medical school. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Felix was taken to a labor camp. He escaped and returned to Lublin, and found that his family had been forced into the ghetto established there. After the liquidation of the Lublin ghetto, Felix, his sister, and his future wife Lucine were sent to the Majdan Tatarski ghetto. Felix, Lucine, and her brother escaped and hid, eventually fleeing to the Warsaw ghetto, where Felix and Lucine were married. They escaped to the "Aryan" side of Warsaw and obtained false papers. Felix worked for the underground during the Warsaw Polish uprising in 1944. He and Lucine were liberated by Soviet forces in January 1945. They immigrated to the United States in October 1950.
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