The camp covered an area of about 10 hectares with some 35 barracks eventually. First, it became a POW camp ("Kriegsgefangenenlager") in late June 1941 for some 6,000 Red Army soldiers, captured in the Soviet zone of occupied Poland after the implementation of Operation Barbarossa. The POWs built the first 20 barracks with three-level bunk-beds (not enough for all). Most of them perished from disease and hunger with no heat in winter, and no laundry or bath; up to 200 a day. The only person who courageously helped the sick during typhus epidemic was a young lady, Helena Gorayska, who paid for it with her own life in 1942 infected with typhus. Some other locals also offered foodstuffs.