AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU

Former sub-camp...

A sub-camp created at the beginning of September 1943 in Łagisza (Lagischa in German) near Będzin, where the German Energie-Versorgung Oberschlesien (EVO) corporation was preparing to build an electric power station. The prisoners, initially numbering 300 and later 500, were housed in four barracks; inside the fence there were also an outpatient clinic building, an infirmary, and three barracks used for storage.

The prisoners did hard labor building a railroad siding leading to the construction site, tearing down houses and outbuildings, digging ditches, and unloading machinery components and construction material. SS-Unterscharführer Horst Czerwinski was the director. According to prisoner accounts, the SS guards at Lagischa were exceptionally brutal. There are repeated descriptions of prisoners being beaten with sticks and rifle butts, and forced into the water at the fire-prevention reservoir on the roll-call square; those who tried to climb out were pushed back in. The garrison numbered more than 30 SS men. The peak prisoner population, 725, came in August 1944. At the end of September the plans to build the power station were shelved and the sub-camp liquidated, with some prisoners transferred to Sosnowitz and Neu-Dachs, and the rest to Auschwitz I. 

Source: Auschwitz from A to Z. An Illustrated History