Jawischowitz

Members of the Boys were slave labourers in the Jawischowitz labour camp, a subcamp of the Auschwitz concentration, extermination and labour camp complex.

The Auschwitz complex was operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland. The camp had 40 subcamps.

The Boys were teenage and child-Holocaust survivors, who were brought to the UK after the war for rest and rehabilitation.

^{Memorial and Museum Auschwitz Birkenau, Poland.}

The camp in the Polish village of Jawiszowice, then known by its German name of Jawishowitz. The camp was situated south of the main camp of Auschwitz I, which was located in Oświęcim.

History

Prisoners held in the camp worked at slave labourers in the coal mines. Prisoners also worked above ground at various sorts of construction jobs. In the second half of 1944, several score underage Jewish prisoners were assigned to sort the coal. The work was backbreaking and in regular selections prisoners were transferred to Auschwitz II-Birkenau and gassed.

Structure

The camp was surrounded by electric barbed-wire fence. There were ten barracks, seven of which accommodated the prisoners. The barracks designed to hold 54 men were housing about 200 each by 1944.

Dissolution and Liberation

In January 1945, about 1,900 prisoners were evacuated on foot to Wodzisław Śląski and then taken by train to Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps.

^{Jawischowitz memorial.}