Between the Wires: The Janowska Camp and the Holocaust in Lviv

Winner of the 2025 Omeljan Pritsak Book Prize in Ukrainian StudiesWinner of the 2025 Brenner Award in Polish-Jewish StudiesFinalist for the 2024 National Jewish Book AwardHonorable Mention for the 2023-2024 American Association for Ukrainian Studies Book PrizeBetween the Wires tells for the first time the history of the Janowska camp in Lviv, Ukraine. Located in a city with the third-largest ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe, Janowska remains one of the least-known sites of the Holocaust, despite being one of the deadliest. Simultaneously a prison, a slave labor camp, a transit camp to the gas chambers, and an extermination site, this hybrid camp played a complex role in the Holocaust.Based on extensive archival research, Between the Wires explores the evolution and the connection to Lviv of this rare urban camp. Waitman Wade Beorn reveals the exceptional brutality of the SS staff alongside an almost unimaginable will to survive among prisoners facing horrendous suffering, whose resistance included an armed uprising. This integrated chronicle of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders follows the history of the camp into the postwar era, including attempts to bring its criminals to justice. Read more