The Janowska Road

The Janowska Road, by Leon Weliczker Wells, was originally published in 1963 and remains one of the most important accounts of Jewish life during the Holocaust. The book is the harrowing account of Wells’ experiences from his sixteenth to his twentieth year in Lvov, Poland, from 1941–1945. Most of that time was spent as a prisoner in the Janowska concentration camp. Wells would later testify that he was the only member of his family, including his parents, six siblings, cousins and uncles, numbering 76 in all, to survive the Holocaust. He survived by becoming part of the “Death Brigade” at Janowska, whose job it was to obliterate, with bonfires and bone-crushers, the evidence of the Third Reich’s guilt: thousands upon thousands of human corpses. Following the war, Wells emigrated to the United States. Leon Wells passed away on December 19, 2009, at the age of 84. This new edition includes an Introduction by Steve W. Chadde, maps, and photographs of Lvov and the Janowska Camp.