In his metic­u­lous­ly researched Between the Wires, Wait­man Wade Beorn intro­duces read­ers to the rel­a­tive­ly unknown camp of Janows­ka. Beorn’s is the first exten­sive study of this dead­ly site locat­ed in Lviv (today in Ukraine), a city with the third largest ghet­to in Nazi-occu­pied Europe. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly a slave labor camp, exter­mi­na­tion site, tran­sit camp, and prison, Janows­ka is cru­cial for under­stand­ing the unique and unusu­al his­to­ry of urban camps, the role of hybrid camps in the mur­der of Europe’s Jews and oth­er Nazi vic­tims, and the geopo­lit­i­cal impor­tance of what is now Ukraine in the his­to­ry of the Holocaust.

Between 1941 and 1944, the Janows­ka camp was the site of the mass mur­der of up to eighty thou­sand peo­ple, and Beorn painstak­ing­ly recon­structs the atro­cious hor­rors that took place there — no small feat giv­en how lit­tle research has pre­vi­ous­ly been done. Using exten­sive archival research, he nar­rates the camp’s his­to­ry into and through the post war peri­od and offers inte­grat­ed por­traits of Janowska’s vic­tims, per­pe­tra­tors, and bystanders. Though the book tells a sto­ry that is painful to grap­ple with, it is essen­tial read­ing if we are to under­stand the full his­to­ry of the Holocaust.