[1] It was established in September 1941 on the outskirts of Lwów in what had become, after the German invasion, the General Government (today: Lviv, Ukraine).

The Germans liquidated the camp in November 1943, with the evidence of mass murder being largely destroyed in the Nazi program of Sonderaktion 1005.

Estimates put the total number of prisoners who passed through the Janowska camp at between 100,000 and 120,000, mostly Polish and Soviet Jews.

[4] At the time of the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, about 160,000 Jews lived in the city;[5] the number had swelled by tens of thousands due to the arrival of Jewish refugees from German-occupied western Poland in September 1939.

factory (Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke) in prewar Steinhaus Milling Machines Merchants (Maszyny młyńskie - Sprzedaż) on 134 Janowska Street (Grodecka 10a address),[10] in northwestern suburbs of Lwów.

The majority, rejected as unfit for work, were deported to Belzec and murdered, or else were shot at the Piaski ravine, located just north of the camp.

In the summer and fall of 1942, thousands of Jews (mainly from the Lwów ghetto) were deported to Janowska and murdered in the Piaski ravine.

[12] Ahead of the Soviet advance, in November 1943 the camp commandant SS-Hauptsturmführer Friedrich Warzok was put in charge of the evacuation of the Janowska inmates to Przemyśl.

Prisoners were forced to open the mass graves in Lysynychi forest 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) east of Lwów ghetto and burn the bodies.

[15] The Soviet Extraordinary State Commission determined that over 200,000 people were murdered in Janowska in the course of the camp operation but this number is inflated.

[17] Leon Weliczker Wells [de] told the Commission that between 6 June and 20 November 1943 his "team burned more than 310,000 bodies", including 170,000 in the immediate vicinity of the camp and another 140,000 or more in the Lysynychi area of eastern Lwów.

Then the German commandant ordered the musicians to come to the center of the circle one by one, put their instruments onto the ground and strip naked, after which they were murdered by a shot to the head.