They were owned by the szlachta noble families, who were supposed to answer royal call in case of an armed conflict (see Pospolite ruszenie).

[1] The present town of Poniatowa was founded in the late 1930s, to house arriving workers of the new telecommunications equipment factory PZT (Zaklady Tele i Radiotechniczne - Filia nr 2), construction of which began in 1937.

In April 1943, during the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, about 15,000 Polish Jews – mostly tailors and seamstresses – were brought to the camp where, for the next six months, they worked as forced labour in war-supply workshops owned by German war profiteer Walter Caspar Többens from Hamburg.

The Poniatowa camp facilities included kitchen, medical room, a kindergarten where the children were kept while the adults and adolescents were making garments for the Wehrmacht.

[3][4] The monument in memory of the victims of the Holocaust was unveiled in Poniatowa on November 4, 2008 in the presence of the ambassador of Israel to Poland David Peleg, the ambassador of Austria, minister from the German embassy, minister from the Czech embassy, voivode of Lublin; the town's mayor, and many other officials, including Warsaw rabbi and priests.

After the collapse of the Soviet empire and the subsequent free market reforms of 1989 the factory experienced economic difficulties, and in 1998 entered into bankruptcy.