[1] The camp was founded in the former Polish Army barracks by SS-Brigadeführer Otto Rasch with the approval of Reinhard Heydrich.

They were the Polish Army defenders of the Modlin Fortress who were forced to capitulate due to lack of ammunition and food.

The Polish intelligentsia, priests and political prisoners were secretly executed there,[3] in addition to 1,558 patients from all the psychiatric hospitals in the district.

It also served as a transit center for deportations from East Prussia to the semi-colonial General Government, and for slave labour to the Reich.

Originally intended to be temporary, for the initial 1,000 inmates, the camp soon became permanent and rezoned as an Arbeitserziehungslager for the civilians brought in from across the new German Zichenau.

The first civilian prisoners arrived in trucks and in trains from the towns on the Polish–East Prussian border, evicted from their homes by the Nazis in an attempt to ethnically cleanse the area of non-Germans entirely.

There was a small barracks for the awaiting SS shooters built in the forest along with five large pits on the right side of the road.

[11][12] In 2019, 1.5 tonnes of burnt remains of murdered camp prisoners were discovered near the village of Białuty, and exhumation works were initiated.

[13] By July 2022, two mass graves were located in the Białuty Forest, containing about 17 tonnes of human ashes which was estimated to be at least that of 8000 persons most of whom were inmates of the camp.

The facility, nicknamed the New Berlin, was used by the Nazis for repairing and refitting army tanks in Operation Barbarossa, and for testing anti-tank weapons and artillery.