Central Labour Camp Jaworzno The Central Labour Camp in Jaworzno has a double history . Originally , it was a German Nazi concentration camp called " SS - Lager Dachsgrube " a . k . a " Arbeitslager Neu - Dachs " established during World War II by the " Third Reich " on the territory of occupied Poland in Jaworzno , Upper Silesia . The camp operated continuously from 1943 under the German administration until the end of war . However , after the liberation and the communist takeover the camp was reinstated and run by the Soviet Union with the People ' s Republic of Poland till 1956 ; as the " Centralny Obóz Pracy w Jaworznie " ( COP Jaworzno ) . There were also two subcamps located at Chrusty and Libiąż . German occupation of Poland . The Nazi concentration camp at Jaworzno in Gau Oberschlesien was opened on June 15 , 1943 , as one of many subcamps of the Auschwitz concentration camp . The " SS - Arbeitslager Neu - Dachs " ( often also called " SS - Lager Dachsgrube " ) provided forced labor for the German war industry . Inmates were primarily employed in coal mining in Jaworzno , and in the construction of the " Wilhelm " power plant ( later renamed " Jaworzno I " ) for Albert Speer ' s company " EnergieVersorgung Oberschlesien AG " ( EVO ) . Among the builders of the camp were British prisoners - of - war from the Stalag VIII - B at Lamsdorf ( Łambinowice ) . The SS unit ( of about 200 to 300 guards ) was composed of the ethnic German " Volksdeutsche " from occupied Poland and other countries , and led by the camp commandant , Bruno Pfütze and his deputy Paul Weissman . There were up to 5 , 000 inmates at a time in the camp , of various nationalities , including European Jews ( about 80 % of all inmates ) , Poles , Germans and others , as well as Soviet prisoners of war . There were 14 reported successful escapes , among them several Soviet POWs , ( who then joined the local Polish communist partisans ) . The camp ' s survival rate was low because of its lethal conditions , including starvation , disease , hard labor and wanton brutality . In effect , about 2 , 000 people lost their lives in the Jaworzno camp ; some of them were murdered by German civilian employees of the coal mine ( mostly members of the SA ) , who had been tasked with overseeing the prisoners at work . In addition , every month about 200 inmates who were unable to work anymore were taken by truck from Jaworzno to the gas chamber s at KL Birkenau , resulting in several thousand more deaths . On the night of January 15 , 1945 , the camp was bombed by the Soviet Air Force as the front approached . The camp was evacuated two days later on January 17 . At the last roll - call , the number of inmates was established at 3 , 664 . The SS executed about 40 prisoners who were unfit for transportation ( 400 others were left there alive ) and some 3 , 200 were marched away westward . Hundreds of them died on the way to the Gross - Rosen concentration camp in Lower Silesia , including about 300 shot dead in a massacre which occurred on the second night of this death march ( in all , about 9 , 000 to 15 , 000 Auschwitz system prisoners died during the marches ) . The abandoned camp was liberated on January 19 , 1945 , by the local unit of the Polish resistance organization Armia Krajowa ( AK ) . Some 350 former prisoners were still alive when the Soviet Red Army forces arrived there a week later . The Stalin era . Since February 1945 the camp had served the Soviet NKVD and then the Ministry of Public Security of Poland as a prison camp for the so - called " enemies of the nation " ( Polish : " wrogowie narodu " ) . Some of them were German POWs ( separately members of the " Waffen - SS " ) and the Nazi collaborators from all over Poland . Others were local German " Volksdeutsche " and Silesian civilians from Jaworzno , nearby Chrzanów , and elsewhere ; they included women and children . There were also Poles who were arrested for their opposition to Stalinism , including members of the Polish non - communist resistance organizations AK and BCh , and later the anti - communist organization WiN . The camp was soon renamed as the " Central Labor Camp " ( COP ) , and the prisoners mostly worked on the construction of Jaworzno power plant or in nearby factories and mines . All of them were interned in separate subcamps and were guarded by more than 300 soldiers from the Internal Security Corps . One of the commandants ( since 1949 ) , was a Polish Jew and communist called Solomon Morel , who had gained a reputation for cruelty in the Zgoda labour camp in Świętochłowice ; the others included Stanisław Kwiatkowski , Ivan Mordasov and Teofil Hazelmajer . According to the ( incomplete ) official figures , about 1 , 535 people died at COP Jaworzno between 1945 and 1947 ( 972 of them of a typhus epidemic in the overcrowded camp ) , out of 6 , 140 who died during this period in all camps and prisons in Poland . Contemporary figures are much higher . According to research conducted by Polish historians including data released by the prison services in 1993 , the list of prisoners who died at COP Jaworzno and its filias between 1944 and 1956 consists of 6 , 987 names , many more than in any other Polish detention centre ( some 2 , 915 died at the second most - lethal Central Labour Camp in Potulice mainly from typhus and dysentery ) . Among the victims were mainly the German " Volksdeutsche " but also the Ukrainians imprisoned by the authorities in the course of Operation Vistula . A separate subcamp existed for the ethnic Lemko and Ukrainian prisoners . On April 23 , 1947 , by a decree of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers ' Party , COP Jaworzno was selected for the detention of civilians during the Operation Vistula deportation campaign . The first transportation of 17 prisoners from Sanok reached the special subcamp of Jaworzno on May 5 and the number of these prisoners eventually totalled almost 4 , 000 ( including nearly 1 , 000 women and children ) ; the vast majority of them arrived in 1947 . Most of these inmates were people suspected of sympathy towards the " bandits " of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army ( UPA ) and those otherwise selected from the Operation Vistula transports ( including more than 100 Lemko intelligentsia and 25 mostly Greek Catholic priests ) . The Lemko and Ukrainian prisoners were gradually released from the spring of 1948 until the spring of 1949 , when the last of them left Jaworzno . Most of them were deported to the new places of settlement or freed and allowed to return to their homes , however , several hundred were sent to military prisons and at least 161 died in the camp . The camp continued to be used as a prison for Polish political prisoners . Between 1951 and 1956 , it was turned into the Progressive Prison for Adolescents under the age of 21 , of which some 15 , 000 passed through . The final closure happened during the wave of general post - Stalinist reforms , following a prison rebellion in 1955 . Aftermath . The former Jaworzno camp was then converted into an apartment complex , the brick barracks forming housing and educational buildings ( a primary musical school and a kindergarten ) . A prominent memorial to the victims of the German camp was erected on the site of the January 1945 massacre of 40 prisoners by the SS . After the fall of communism in Poland , the monument was joined by a small commemorative plinth to the inmates of the political prison in the nearby grounds of the primary school . In 1998 , Polish and Ukrainian Presidents Aleksander Kwaśniewski and Leonid Kuchma also erected a memorial dedicated to " the German , Polish , and Ukrainian victims of communist terror who perished in the Central Labour Camp " , which was erected on the previously unmarked site of a mass grave of 162 persons in the forest outside the camp . In 1999 , Polish authorities started an official investigation into the crimes committed in the camp against Polish citizens of Ukrainian ethnic descent .