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 The Plaszow camp, established in 1942 under the authority of the SS and police leaders in Krakow, was initially a forced-labor camp for Jews. The original site of the camp included two Jewish cemeteries. From time to time the SS enlarged the camp. It reached it's maximum size in 1944, the same year that it became a concentration camp. The largest number of people confined in Plaszow at any one time was over 20,000. Thousands were killed there, mostly by shooting.
 As the USSR Army approached in the summer of 1944, the Germans prepared to dismantle Plaszow. The SS transferred prisoners to other concentration camps in Germany and Austria. Others were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp and murdered there. The Germans attempted to remove all traces of the crimes that had been committed in the camp. They ordered that mass graves at Plaszow be opened and the bodies exhumed and burned. In January 1945, the last prisoners from Plaszow were sent to Auschwitz for evacuation further west.
Source: www.ushmm.org
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