Shooting from the Villa: Commandant Gustav Willhaus and the Janowska Camp
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13m
30 January 1933. Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany, and the Nazi regime begins turning persecution into state policy. Across Europe, thousands of camps and ghettos are established. One of the men who rose within this system was Gustav Willhaus.
A member of the Nazi Party and the SS, Willhaus became commandant of the Janowska camp in Lviv in 1942. Under his leadership, the camp became a place of forced labor, torture, and execution. Prisoners were murdered for minor offenses or no reason at all. Selections sent thousands to the Bełżec death camp, while mass shootings took place nearby.
From the terrace of his villa inside the camp, Willhaus reportedly shot prisoners for “entertainment.” Witnesses later described killing as routine. Even his wife participated in the violence.
As the war turned against Nazi Germany, Janowska was liquidated and the SS attempted to erase evidence of its crimes. But destiny prepared a different end for Gustav Willhaus — one that came in the final weeks of the war.
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