Worse Than Her Husband? The Janowska Camp Commandant’s Wife—WW2 Lviv
In the summer of 1941, the city of Lviv is taken by German troops and quickly transformed into a place of persecution, forced labour, and mass murder. Jewish families are rounded up, beaten in the streets, and driven into ghettos and camps, while German authorities establish control through fear and violence.
Among the sites that emerge in this occupied city is the Janowska camp, where thousands of prisoners are exploited, tortured, and killed. Inside the camp stands a villa, home to the camp commandant and his family. From its balcony, the commandant’s wife watches the prisoners below and takes part in the violence herself, shooting inmates as they work, turning killing into part of her daily life. Her name is Elisabeth Willhaus.
Elisabeth Willhaus was born in 1913 as Elisabeth Riedel into a working-class family in the Saarland, an important German industrial region marked by ironworks, economic struggle, and political instability. Her father worked as a senior foreman, and her upbringing followed a strict but ordinary path shaped by discipline and modest expectations.
She attended Catholic school and received a basic education. Thanks to her background, her early adult life showed little direction or stability. She worked on a farm, helped in households, and later trained in cooking and domestic management, yet none of these roles provided satisfaction or a sense of purpose in her life.
She moved from one job to the other, never settling, always searching for something that would lift her beyond the limitations of her origins. Her wages remained low, her work unremarkable, and her future uncertain. Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party came into power in January 1933. Elisabeth’s life changed one year later when she entered the world of Nazi journalism.
Within the environment of a Nazi party-controlled newspaper Nationalsozialistische Zeitung Rheinfront, she found more than employment. She found belonging, structure, and a clear path forward. The Nazi movement offered identity and opportunity, especially for those willing to embrace its ideology fully. It was here that she met Gustav Willhaus, a man whose personality and ambitions reflected the brutal energy of the movement itself.
Gustav had already built his identity within Nazi paramilitary organisations. He had joined the SA, the Sturmabteilung, which functioned as the street fighting force of the Nazi Party in the early 1920s, and later became a member of the SS, the Schutzstaffel, which would grow into the central instrument of terror, policing, and extermination within the Nazi regime in Germany.
He was known as aggressive and violent, a man shaped by street fights and ideological loyalty to the Nazi Party rather than education or refinement. Their relationship developed quickly, driven not by shared sensitivity or affection, but by ambition and alignment with the system that surrounded them. Both saw Nazism as a path out of their ordinary lives.
During the political struggle over the Saarland in 1935, they actively participated in the Nazi campaign that combined propaganda with violence. Elisabeth worked within the Nazi newspaper, shaping propaganda narratives and spreading their ideology, while Gustav took part in physical intimidation on the streets, attacking political opponents and enforcing the will of the Nazi movement through force regarding the referendum about the future of the Saar region.
The Saar Territory referendum was a plebiscite to determine the future sovereignty of the Saar Basin, a region located between France and Germany. The Saar had been placed under the administration of the League of Nations for 15 years following World War I by the Treaty of Versailles. In the referendum, voters were asked whether the Saar should remain under League of Nations administration, return to Germany, or become part of France.
To the surprise of neutral observers as well as the Nazis themselves, over 90% voted in favour of reuniting with Germany. A few months later, after the Saar referendum returned the region to Nazi Germany, Elisabeth and Gustav Willhaus married in October 1935, even before receiving full SS approval. This was a sign of both their impatience and their belief that the Nazi system would ultimately accept them.
The religious differences between them were quickly dismissed as Elisabeth´s Catholic background and her family’s expectations regarding the issue about raising children in the Catholic faith gave way to the demands of the Nazi ideology, which required total loyalty. The future they chose was not shaped by faith or tradition, but by power and opportunity within the Nazi regime and the same fate awaited their children in the future.
In May 1939, after years of trying, their daughter Heike was born, and for a brief moment their life appeared stable. But only a few months later, the Second World War began on 1 September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. For individuals like Gustav and Elisabeth, it also opened new paths for advancement as Gustav soon joined the Waffen SS, the military branch of the SS.
Soon he moved into roles involving forced labour and the administration of occupied territories where his career advanced rapidly during the war – not despite his brutality, but because of it. In November 1941, Willhaus was transferred to Lviv, today the largest city in western Ukraine, then part of German-occupied Poland.
During his time there, he became deputy manager at the local branch of the German Armaments Works, or DAW. With the backing of SS-Brigadeführer Fritz Katzmann, commander of the SS and Police District Galicia, Willhaus quickly gained autonomy. By March 1942, he had assumed command as the head of a labour camp for Jews, located next to but separate from the DAW facilities at 134 Janowska Street in the northwest part of the city, known as the Janowska camp. Willhaus moved into a villa at the heart of the camp, and in the summer of 1942, his wife and
3-year-old daughter Heike joined him there. Living conditions in the camp were brutal and often inmates were given meaningless tasks designed to exhaust them before their deaths. Many prisoners chose to take their own lives rather than continue suffering. Upon returning from work, prisoners were forced to run back into the camp.
Willhaus and his assistant Friedrich Warzok singled out Jews showing signs of fatigue, leaving them between rows of barbed wire to die. Each morning, all prisoners faced a roll-call inspection by an SS officer, and those who did not pass were immediately executed. One high-ranking SS officer had a particular habit during roll calls: if he disliked a prisoner’s appearance, he would shoot him in the back of the neck.
Each SS officer had their preferred method of killing Jews: victims were murdered for minor offenses, working slowly, or without reason, with the execution method depending on the mood of the perpetrator. Methods included shooting, beating, choking, hanging, crucifixion upside down, or with knives and axes. Women also suffered brutal deaths, often being beaten or fatally stabbed.
Elisabeth Willhaus did not remain separate from what was happening around her, on the contrary she developed her own reputation. First Elisabeth insisted that their villa, which was inside the camp, required renovations and demanded the construction of a second-floor balcony where the family could enjoy afternoon refreshments.
She used Jewish prisoners as slaves to do whatever she needed at home, including the gardening work, and as they were working outside, she kept a close eye on them from the balcony. She used this vantage point also to shoot prisoners—for “the sport of it,” as one Jewish eyewitness stated. Elisabeth Willhaus also had a pistol. When the guests came to visit the Willhaus family and sat on the spacious porch of their luxurious house, she would show off her marksmanship by shooting down camp inmates, to the delight of her guests.
According to one witness’ testimony the little daughter of the family, Heike, would vigorously applaud the sight. Elisabeth Willhaus’s preferred weapon was a Flobert gun the range of which was limited, but the impact was powerful enough to result in lethal injuries. She chose her victims at random and for fun – one time she fired a single shot at a Jewish labourer who was walking by the house, while her husband was standing next to her on the balcony.
On another occasion, a morning in September 1942, she appeared on the balcony with her husband and a few guests and shot into a group of Jewish prisoners who were about sixty feet away, picking up garbage around the house. One of the prisoners killed was a thirty-year-old from the village of Sambor – today’s Sambir in western Ukraine. In April 1943, on a Sunday, Elisabeth Willhaus appeared again on the balcony.
With her child at her side, she shot into a group of Jewish labourers in the garden. At least four Jews fell down on the spot, including Jakob Helfer from the village of Bóbrka – today’s Bibrka, located 30 kilometres, or about 19 miles, southeast of Lviv. One day that summer, she aimed at a group of labourers farther away in the camp.
They were huddled together, trying to trade. About five were killed. Not long after this incident, Elisabeth Willhaus shot Jews during roll call, aiming more precisely at their heads. According to postwar investigators, she also aimed at the hearts of Jews sick with typhus and shot them at close range. The same statement that was made about her husband’s actions can be said about Elisabeth’s actions. – “She killed people as easily as a woodchipper cuts wood.
” In July 1943, Gustav was reassigned to military service, leaving the camp behind. Elisabeth remained in Lviv for some time, despite the advancing front. Eventually, as Soviet forces approached and recaptured the city in July 1944, she fled and returned to Germany.
On 29 March 1945, her husband, Gustav was killed in Steinfischbach, 60 kilometres, or 37 miles, northeast of Frankfurt in the west-central part of Germany. After the war ended in May 1945, Elisabeth Willhaus, now a widow, was left alone with a small child and without any financial support. For a time, she lived with her family, relying on their support as she tried to rebuild her life in a country devastated by defeat.
By 1948, she remarried, choosing a lawyer as her new husband, and together they attempted to establish a stable future by opening an Automat business. However, their efforts were marked by irregularities, and when war crimes investigators eventually located her in 1964, they discovered that both she and her husband had already attracted attention for petty crimes and business-related violations.
Despite the growing number of testimonies describing her actions during the war, Elisabeth Willhaus was never brought to justice. Investigators faced a critical obstacle: her role in the Nazi system had never been formalized through an official position, which meant that no written records directly linked her to the crimes she had committed.
Although numerous witnesses placed her at the scene and described in detail how she openly shot and killed prisoners, the absence of documentation prevented the courts from confirming her responsibility in legal terms. In the end, a woman who had participated in mass murder in full view of others was not held accountable, and she remained free.
Thanks for watching the World History Channel. Be sure to like and subscribe and click the bell notification icon so you don’t miss our next episodes. We thank you and we’ll see you next time on the channel.
