Szebnie was a forced-labor camp established during World War II by Nazi Germany in the General Government in the south-eastern part of occupied Poland.

First, it became a POW camp (Kriegsgefangenenlager) in late June 1941 for some 6,000 Red Army soldiers,[3] captured in the Soviet zone of occupied Poland after the implementation of Operation Barbarossa.

[5] By the fall of 1943 the number of prisoners reached 5,000 including Jews and non-Jews from Rzeszów,[6] Tarnów, Bochnia,[7] Jasło, Frysztak, Dukla and Pustków.

[8] The camp commandants included Untersturmführer Anton Scheidt (inventor of prisoner "crew train" running 12-hour shifts round-the-clock),[9] Hauptsturmführer Hans Kellermann (connoisseur of young camp-women, put in jail by the SS for stealing from the Reich), and SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Blank (as the last, for just two weeks).

[3][10] Notably, stealing collected gold and money for personal enrichment was a common practice among concentration camp commandants; two of them, Koch and Florstedt both from Majdanek, were executed by the SS for the same reason in April 1945.

[11] Through the whole existence of the camp the commandants resided in the Gorayski manor, holding wild drinking parties for the SS several times a week (Scheidt) and trapping scores of attractive Jewish and non-Jewish "house maids" (Kellermann).

[10] In August 1943, the Jews were separated from the rest of prisoners in a special Jewish zone on the north side of the camp behind a barb-wire fence (see map).

[3] Subsequently, almost two thousand were murdered in mass executions at the Dobrucowa Forest nearby in the fall and winter of 1943,[3] on the orders of SS-Hauptsturmführer Amon Göth from Płaszów.