Arbeitslager Jawischowitz

Jawiszowice · subcamp of KL Auschwitz

Record no. 6 of 45
Fragments preserved

2 500 Prisoners at peak strength

One of the largest subcamps of Auschwitz, beside the mine at Brzeszcze. Today there is a park there whose shape repeats the outline of the camp.

German name: Arbeitslager Jawischowitz
Established: 15 August 1942
Closed: 18/19 January 1945
Subordinate to: Auschwitz III-Monowitz (from November 1943)
Employer: Bergwerksverwaltung Oberschlesien GmbH (Reichswerke Hermann Göring)
Type of work: Coal mining and the construction of a power station
Surviving structures: The outline of the site, today a municipal park
Access: Municipal park, ul. Dworcowa, open ground

Period of operation against the Auschwitz system

AUG 1942 — JAN 1945

1940

1941

1942

1943

1944

1945

All 45 subcamps of KL Auschwitz on one map, this one marked with a ring. The filled square is Auschwitz I, the empty one Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

Distances in a straight line — approximate

Auschwitz I≈ 6 km
Auschwitz II-Birkenau≈ 6 km
Krakow≈ 60 km
TownJawiszowice

Measured from the centre of the town, accurate to within a few kilometres.

Branch of industry in the register

Coal mine

What happened here

Between August 1942 and January 1945 the strength of the subcamp ranged from seven hundred to two and a half thousand men. On 17 January 1945 there were one thousand nine hundred and eighty eight of them. Many more men passed through over the whole period, because transports arrived and left.

The prisoners worked underground at the Brzeszcze-Jawiszowice mine, on surface work and on the construction of a new power station. The mine belonged to the Hermann Göring concern.

What is left

The subcamp stood where the municipal park on ul. Dworcowa in Brzeszcze is today. The shape and the size of the park match the area of the camp.

An information board has been put up on the site of the main gate. This is one of the few places where the boundaries of a subcamp can be walked on foot.

This is one of the few places in the register that can be visited today; we show it in our educational programmes as the mine and the subcamp bathhouse at Jawiszowice. See the programmes →

Archival photographs of this place
Photographs and documents from the time the camp existed are held and made available by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim.

Museum gallery →

Sources — the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim, archive and historical collections · Re-Finding the Sub Camps of Auschwitz, field research by the Tiergartenstrasse4 Association 2005–2008, subcamps-auschwitz.org · field documentation by Auschwitz Subcamps.

Auschwitz Subcamps is a brand of KrakowOmnia sp. z o.o.

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