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
Aktion Erntefest
Aktion Erntefest
Poniatowa