Plaszów concentration camp was first established
at the end of 1942 as a penal forced labour camp. At capacity, it
occupied around eighty hectares between Ul. Wielicka and Ul. Swoszowicka.
It was enclosed by two electrified, barbed wire
fences attached to upright poles with guard towers every few hundred
metres. Both Poles and Jews were imprisoned there, but in different
sectors. There were about 1,000 Polish prisoners - a figure which
climbed heavily during the summer 1944 Warsaw Rising.
The Jewish area of the camp was divided into a number
of sectors. There was a living area with separate buildings for men
and women, an assembly point, and industrial area with workshops,
a 'hospital' with several barracks for the sick, a quarantine barracks
with individual places and a food area.
There was also a transport sector with vehicle workshops,
stables and a coach house, an administrative sector with the commander's
headquarters, pens for livestock and housing for Germans. A railway
station was built beyond the wire.
The prisoners toiled in the workshops, in the quarry,
and also outside the camp in a nearby cable factory in Plaszów
and in a number of firms in the na Zablocie area. These included Oskar
Schindler's enamel ware factory at Ul. Lipowa no.4.
Plaszów concentration camp would probably
be almost forgotten outside of Poland were it not for Keneally's book
and Spielberg's film Schindler's List.