Poniatowa concentration camp in the town of Poniatowa in occupied Poland , west of Lublin , was established by the '' SS '' in the latter half of 1941 initially , to hold Soviet prisoners of war following Operation Barbarossa . By , about 20,000 Soviet POWs had perished there from hunger , disease and executions . The camp was known at that time as the '' Stalag 359 Poniatowa '' . Afterwards , the '' Stammlager '' was redesigned an expanded as a concentration camp to provide slave labour supporting the German war effort , with workshops run by the '' SS Ostindustrie '' ( Osti ) on the grounds of the prewar Polish telecommunications equipment factory founded in the late 1930s . Poniatowa became part of the Majdanek concentration camp system of subcamps in the early autumn of 1943 . The wholesale massacre of its mostly Jewish workforce took place during the '' Aktion Erntefest '' , thus concluding the Operation Reinhard in General Government
Aktion Erntefest
Aktion Erntefest
Poniatowa concentration camp