Afterwards, the Stammlager was redesigned and expanded as a concentration camp to provide slave labour supporting the German war effort, with workshops run by the SS Ostindustrie (Osti) on the grounds of the prewar Polish telecommunications equipment factory founded in the late 1930s.

[3][4] Two years into the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, in October 1942 Hauptsturmführer Amon Göth – soon to become the commandant of Kraków-Płaszów – visited Poniatowa with a blueprint for redevelopment.

They were allowed to keep children through daycare, wear their own clothes, and retain their personal effects, because the new uniforms made by them, were great morale boosters at the Front.

The Jewish tailors and seamstresses of Warsaw worked practically free of charge for the German war profiteer Walter Caspar Többens (Toebbens) who was making a fortune.

[7] After the closure of the nearby Belzec death factory in June 1943,[8] head of the Operation Reinhard, Obergruppenführer Odilo Globocnik inspected the Poniatowa facility in August 1943.

[10] At the beginning of secretive Operation Harvest Festival (Aktion Erntefest) the inmates were ordered to dig anti-tank trenches at Poniatowa, Trawniki, as well as at the Majdanek concentration camps, unaware of their true purpose.

The firemen were ordered by the screaming SS to leave immediately, but inadvertently noticed that a Jew running from the flames was bludgeoned with rifle butts, and thrown back into the burning building.

[14] Commandant Gottlieb Hering then joined fellow SS-men from the Operation Reinhard staff at Risiera di San Sabba in Trieste, Italy.

The monument was unveiled in the presence of the ambassador of Israel to Poland David Peleg, the ambassador of Austria Alfred Langle; Andreas Meitner, minister from the German embassy; Jan Tomaszek, minister from the Czech embassy; Henryka Strojnowska, voivode of Lublin; the town mayor Lilla Stefanek, and many other officials, including Warsaw rabbi and priests.