and the German conquest of Poland. During the German occupation, the already erected factory was used by the Nazis to support the war effort using slave labor. Holocaust history of PZT and Többens In the latter half of 1941 (following Operation Barbarossa), the Germans established the first camp for the Soviet POWs on the factory grounds. By mid-1942, about 20,000 Soviet prisoners had perished there. In April 1943, during the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, about 15,000 Polish Jews – mostly tailors and seamstresses – were brought to the camp where, for the next six months, they worked as forced labour in war-supply workshops owned by German war profiteer Walter Caspar Többens from Hamburg. The Poniatowa camp facilities included kitchen, medical room, a kindergarten where the children were kept while the adults and adolescents were making garments for the Wehrmacht. The entire workforce of the camp including 3,000 Slovakian and Austrian Jews (the camp elite), were executed during the Operation Harvest Festival (Aktion Erntefest) of November 4, 1943, into fake anti-aircraft trenches. The monument in memory of the victims of the Holocaust was unveiled in Poniatowa on November 4, 2008 in the presence of the ambassador of Israel to Poland David Peleg, the ambassador of Austria, minister from the German embassy, minister from the Czech embassy, voivode of Lublin; the town's mayor, and many other officials, including Warsaw rabbi and priests. Germans left Poniatowa in July 1944 ahead of the Soviet offensive. After the war, in 1949, the industrial development of Poniatowa resumed, with a reconstituted factory reestablished in the town. As a result of the period of intensive growth after 1952, the town received its city charter in 1962. In its heyday, during the Communist regime, the factory employed some 5,000 workers, about half of the town's population. It produced components for refrigerators and other household appliances. After the collapse of the Soviet empire and the subsequent free market reforms of 1989 the factory experienced economic difficulties, and in 1998 entered into bankruptcy. Presently, attempts are being made to attract new investors to take advantage of the factory's excellent infrastructure. References Poniatowa unofficial site (under construction) Cities and towns in Lublin Voivodeship Opole Lubelskie County Lesser Poland Lublin Governorate Lublin Voivodeship (1919–1939) Holocaust locations in Poland