51°13′14″N22°35′58″E / 51.22056°N 22.59944°E /51.22056; 22.59944
| Majdanek / Lublin | |
|---|---|
| Nazi concentration camp | |
 Building of theNew Crematorium  | |
 Interactive map of Majdanek / Lublin | |
| Location | NearLublin,General Government (German-occupied Poland) |
| Operated by | SS-Totenkopfverbände |
| Commandant |
|
| Original use | Forced labor |
| Operational | October 1, 1941 –July 22, 1944 |
| Inmates | Jews, Poles |
| Number of inmates | 150,000 |
| Killed | Estimated 78,000 |
| Liberated by | Soviet Union, July 22, 1944 |
Majdanek (orLublin) was aNazi concentration andextermination camp built and operated by theSS on the outskirts of the city ofLublin during theGerman occupation of Poland inWorld War II. It had threegas chambers,[1] two wooden gallows, and some 227 structures in all, placing it among the largest ofNazi concentration camps. Although initially intended forforced labor rather thanextermination, it was used to murder an estimated 78,000 people duringOperation Reinhard, the German plan tomurder all Polish Jews within their ownoccupied homeland. In operation from 1 October 1941 to 22 July 1944, it was captured nearly intact. Therapid advance of the SovietRed Army duringOperation Bagration prevented the SS from destroying most of its infrastructure, and Deputy Camp CommandantAnton Thernes failed to remove the most incriminating evidence of war crimes.[2]
The camp was nicknamed Majdanek ("little Majdan") in 1941 by local residents, as it was adjacent to the Lublin ghetto of Majdan Tatarski. Nazi documents initially described the site as aPOW camp of theWaffen-SS, based on how it was funded and operated. It was renamed by theReich Security Main Office asKonzentrationslager Lublin on April 9, 1943, but the local Polish name remained more popular.[3]
After the camp's liberation in July 1944, the site was formally protected by theSoviet Union.[4] By autumn, with the war still raging, it had been preserved as a museum. Thecrematorium ovens and gas chambers were largely intact, serving as some of the best examples of thegenocidal policy ofNazi Germany. The site was given national designation in 1965.[5] Today, theMajdanek State Museum is aHolocaust memorial museum and education centre devoted entirely to the memory of atrocities committed in the network of concentration, slave-labor, and extermination camps and sub-camps ofKL Lublin. It houses a permanent collection of rare artifacts, archival photographs, and testimony.[6]
Konzentrationslager Lublin was established in October 1941 on the orders ofReichsführer-SSHeinrich Himmler, forwarded toOdilo Globocnik soon after Himmler's visit to Lublin on 17–20 July 1941 in the course ofOperation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The original plan drafted by Himmler was for the camp to hold at least 25,000 POWs.[7]
After large numbers of Sovietprisoners-of-war were captured during theBattle of Kiev, the projected camp capacity was subsequently increased to 50,000. Construction for that many began on October 1, 1941 (as it did also inAuschwitz-Birkenau, which had received the same order). In early November, the plans were extended to allow for 125,000 inmates and in December to 150,000.[7] It was further increased in March 1942 to allow for 250,000 Soviet prisoners of war.
Construction began with 150 Jewish forced laborers from one of Globocnik's Lublin camps, to which the prisoners returned each night. Later the workforce included 2,000Red Army POWs, who had to survive extreme conditions, including sleeping out in the open. By mid-November, only 500 of them were still alive, of whom at least 30% were incapable of further labor. In mid-December, barracks for 20,000 were ready when atyphus epidemic broke out, and by January 1942 all the slave laborers – POWs as well asPolish Jews – were dead. All work ceased until March 1942, when new prisoners arrived. Although the camp did eventually have the capacity to hold approximately 50,000 prisoners, it did not grow significantly beyond that size.[citation needed]
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In July 1942, Himmler visitedBelzec,Sobibor, andTreblinka, the three secretextermination camps built specifically for Operation Reinhard to eliminatePolish Jewry. These camps had begun operations in March, May, and July 1942, respectively. Subsequently, Himmler issued an order that the deportations of Jews to the camps from the five districts ofoccupied Poland, which constituted the NaziGeneralgouvernement, be completed by the end of 1942.[8]
Majdanek was made into a secondary sorting and storage depot at the onset of Operation Reinhard, for property and valuables taken from the victims at the killing centers in Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka.[9] Due to large Jewish populations in southeastern Poland, including the ghettos atKraków,Lwów,Zamość andWarsaw, which were not yet "processed", Majdanek was refurbished as a killing center around March 1942. The gassing was performed in plain view of other inmates, without as much as a fence around the buildings. Another frequent murder method was shootings by the squads ofTrawnikis.[10] According to theMajdanek Museum, the gas chambers began operation in September 1942.[11]
There are two identical buildings at Majdanek whereZyklon B was used. Executions were carried out in barrack 41 with crystalline hydrogen cyanide released by the Zyklon B. The same poison gas pellets were used to disinfect prisoner clothing in barrack 42.[12]
Due to the pressing need for foreign manpower in the war industry, Jewish laborers from Poland were originally spared. For a time they were either kept in the ghettos, such asthe one in Warsaw (which became a concentration camp after theWarsaw Ghetto Uprising), or sent to labor camps such as Majdanek, where they worked primarily at theSteyr-Daimler-Puch weapons/munitions factory.
By mid-October 1942, the camp held 9,519 registered prisoners, of whom 7,468 (or 78.45%) were Jews, and another 1,884 (19.79%) were non-Jewish Poles. By August 1943, there were 16,206 prisoners in the main camp, of which 9,105 (56.18%) were Jews and 3,893 (24.02%) were non-Jewish Poles.[9] Minority contingents included Belarusians, Ukrainians, Russians, Germans, Austrians, Slovenes, Italians, and French and Dutch nationals. According to the data from the official Majdanek State Museum, 300,000 people were inmates of the camp at one time or another. The prisoner population at any given time was much lower.[citation needed]
From October 1942 onward Majdanek also had female overseers. These SS guards, trained at theRavensbrück concentration camp, includedElsa Ehrich,Hermine Boettcher-Brueckner,Hermine Braunsteiner,Hildegard Lächert, Rosy Suess (Süss), Elisabeth Knoblich-Ernst, Charlotte Karla Mayer-Woellert, andGertrud Heise (1942–1944), who were later convicted as war criminals.[13]
Majdanek did not initially have subcamps. These were incorporated in early autumn 1943 when the remaining forced labor camps around Lublin, including Budzyn,Trawniki,Poniatowa, Krasnik, Pulawy, as well as the "Airstrip" ("Airfield"), and"Lipowa 7") concentration camps became sub-camps of Majdanek.[citation needed]
From 1 September 1941 to 28 May 1942, Alfons Bentele headed the Administration in the camp. Alois Kurz, SSUntersturmführer, was a German staff member at Majdanek, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and at Mittelbau-Dora. He was not charged. On 18 June 1943,Fritz Ritterbusch moved to KL Lublin to become aide-de-camp to the Commandant.[14]
Due to the camp's proximity to Lublin, prisoners were able to communicate with the outside world through letters smuggled out by civilian workers who entered the camp.[15] Many of these surviving letters have been donated by their recipients to the camp museum.[15] In 2008 the museum held a special exhibition displaying a selection of those letters.[15]
From February 1943 onward, the Germans allowed thePolish Red Cross andCentral Welfare Council to bring in food items to the camp.[15] Prisoners could receive food packages addressed to them by name via the Polish Red Cross. The Majdanek Museum archives document 10,300 such itemized deliveries.[16]
Until June 1942, the bodies of those murdered at Majdanek were buried in mass graves[17] (these were later exhumed and burned by the prisoners assigned toSonderkommando 1005).
From June 1942, the SS disposed of the bodies by burning them, either on pyres made from the chassis of old lorries or in a crematorium. The so-calledFirst Crematorium had two ovens which were brought to Majdanek from theSachsenhausen concentration camp.[17] This facility stood in "Interfield I", the area between the first and the second fenced camp section;[18] it is no longer in existence today.[17]
In autumn of 1943, the first crematorium at Majdanek was replaced by theNew Crematorium. It was a T-shaped wooden building with five ovens, fueled withcoke and built by the Heinrich KoriGmbH of Berlin. The building was set on fire by the Germans on 22 July 1944 as they abandoned the camp on the day that the Red Army entered the outskirts of Lublin. The crematorium building which stands on the site today is a reconstruction from the time when the former camp became a memorial. Its ovens are the original ones built in 1943.[17]
Operation Reinhard continued until early November 1943, when the last Jewish prisoners of the Majdanek system of subcamps from the District Lublin in theGeneral Government were massacred by the firing squads ofTrawniki men duringOperation "Harvest Festival". With respect to the main camp at Majdanek, the most notorious executions occurred on November 3, 1943, when 18,400 Jews were murdered in a single day.[19] The next morning, 25 Jews who had succeeded in hiding were found and shot. Meanwhile, 611 other prisoners, 311 women and 300 men, were commanded to sort through the clothes of the dead and cover the burial trenches. The men were later assigned toSonderkommando 1005, where they had to exhume the same bodies for cremation. These men were then executed. The 311 women were subsequently sent toAuschwitz, where they were murdered by gas. By the end ofAktion Erntefest ("Harvest Festival"), Majdanek had only 71 Jews left out of the total number of 6,562 prisoners still alive.[9]
Executions of the remaining prisoners continued at Majdanek in the following months. Between December 1943 and March 1944, Majdanek received approximately 18,000 so-called "invalids", many of whom were subsequently murdered withZyklon B. Executions by firing squad continued as well, with 600 shot on January 21, 1944; 180 shot on January 23, 1944; and 200 shot on March 24, 1944.[citation needed]
Adjutant Karl Höcker's postwar trial documented his culpability in mass murders committed at this camp:
On 3 May 1989 a district court in the German city of Bielefeld sentenced Höcker to four years imprisonment for his involvement in gassing to death prisoners, primarily Polish Jews, in the concentration camp Majdanek in Poland. Camp records showed that between May 1943 and May 1944 Höcker had acquired at least 3,610 kilograms (7,960 lb) of Zyklon B poisonous gas for use in Majdanek from the Hamburg firm ofTesch & Stabenow.[20]
In addition, CommandantRudolf Höss of Auschwitz wrote in his memoirs, while awaiting trial in Poland, that one method of murder used at Majdanek (KZ Lublin) was Zyklon B.[21][22]
In late July 1944, with Soviet forces rapidly approaching Lublin, the Germans hastily evacuated the camp and partially destroyed the crematoria before SovietRed Army troops arrived on July 24, 1944.[23][24] Majdanek is the best-preserved camp of theHolocaust due to incompetence by its deputy commander,Anton Thernes. It was the first major concentration camp liberated by Allied forces, and the horrors found there were widely publicised.[25]
Although 1,000 inmates had previously beenforcibly marched to Auschwitz (of whom only half arrived alive), the Red Army still found thousands of inmates, mainly POWs, still in the camp, and ample evidence of the mass murder that had occurred there.[citation needed]
The official estimate of 78,000 victims, of those 59,000 Jews, was determined in 2005 byTomasz Kranz [pl], director of the Research Department of theMajdanek State Museum, calculated following the discovery of theHöfle Telegram in 2000. That number is close to the one currently indicated on the museum's website.[26] The total number of victims has been controversial since the research of JudgeZdzisław Łukaszkiewicz in 1948, who approximated a figure of 360,000 victims. It was followed by an estimate of around 235,000 victims byCzesław Rajca (1992) of the Majdanek Museum, which was cited by the museum for years. The current figure is considered "incredibly low" by Rajca,[10] nevertheless, it has been accepted by the Museum Board of Directors "with a certain caution", pending further research into the number of prisoners who were not entered into theHolocaust train records by German camp administration. For now, the museum states that based on new research, some 150,000 prisoners arrived at Majdanek during the 34 months of its existence.[26] Of the more than two million Jews murdered in the course ofOperation Reinhard, some 60,000 (56,000 known by name)[27] were most certainly killed at Majdanek, amongst its almost 80,000 counted victims.[10][28][29]
The Soviets initially grossly overestimated the number of murders, claiming at theNuremberg Trials in 1946 that there were no fewer than 400,000 Jewish victims, and the official Soviet count was of 1.5 million victims of different nationalities.[30] Independent Canadian journalist Raymond Arthur Davies, based in Moscow and on the payroll of theCanadian Jewish Congress,[31][32] visited Majdanek on August 28, 1944. The following day he sent a telegram toSaul Hayes, the executive director of the Canadian Jewish Congress. It states: "I do wish [to] stress that Majdanek where one million Jews and half a million others [were] killed"[31] and "You can tell America that at least three million [Polish] Jews [were] killed of whom at least a third were killed in Majdanek",[31] and though widely reported in this way, the estimate was never taken seriously by scholars.
In 1961,Raul Hilberg estimated that 50,000 Jewish victims were murdered in the camp.[10] In 1992, Czesław Rajca gave his own estimate of 235,000; it was displayed at the camp museum.[10] The 2005 research by the Head of Scientific Department at Majdanek Museum, historian Tomasz Kranz indicated that there were 79,000 victims, 59,000 of them Jews.[10][29]
The differences between the estimates stem from different methods used and the amounts of evidence available to the researchers. The Soviet figures relied on the crudest methodology, used forAuschwitz estimates also—it assumed that the number of victims more or less corresponded to the crematoria capacity. Later researchers tried to take much more evidence into account, using records of deportations, contemporaneous population censuses, and recovered Nazi records. Hilberg's 1961 estimate, using these records, aligns closely with Kranz's report.[citation needed]
| Name | Rank | Service and Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Karl-Otto Koch | SS-Standartenführer | Camp commandant from October 1941 to August 1942. Tried and executed by theSS on April 5, 1945, for robbing the Reich of Jewish gold and money and committing multiple unauthorized murders.[33] |
| Max Koegel | SS-Sturmbannführer | Camp commandant from August 1942 to November 1942. Committed suicide inAllied detention in Germany the day after his arrest on June 27, 1946.[34] |
| Hermann Florstedt | SS-Obersturmführer | Camp commandant from November 1942 to October 1943. Tried and sentenced to death by theSS on April 15, 1945, for stealing from the Reich to become rich, the same as Koch. Whether he was executed is unknown.[34] |
| Martin Gottfried Weiss | SS-Obersturmbannführer | Camp commandant from November 1, 1943 to May 5, 1944. Tried by the U.S. military during theDachau trials in November 1945, hanged on May 29, 1946.[34] |
| Arthur Liebehenschel | SS-Obersturmbannführer | Camp commandant from May 5, 1944 to July 22, 1944. Tried by Poland at theAuschwitz trial inKraków, sentenced to death and hanged on January 28, 1948.[34] |
| ||
After the camp takeover, in August 1944 the Soviets protected the camp area and convened a special Polish-Soviet commission, to investigate and document the crimes against humanity committed at Majdanek.[36] This effort constitutes one of the first attempts to document the Nazi war crimes in Eastern Europe. In the fall of 1944 theMajdanek State Museum was founded on the grounds of the Majdanek concentration camp. In 1947 the actual camp became the monument of martyrology by the decree ofPolish Parliament. In the same year, some 1,300 m3 of surface soil mixed with human ashes and fragments of bones was collected and turned into a large mound. Majdanek became a national museum in 1965.[5]
Some Nazi personnel of the camp were prosecuted immediately after the war, and some in the decades afterward. In November and December 1944, four SS Men and twokapos were placed on trial; one committed suicide and the rest were hanged on December 3, 1944.[37] The last major, widely publicized prosecution of 16 SS members from Majdanek (Majdanek-Prozess in German) took place from 1975 to 1981 in West Germany. Of 1,037 SS members who worked at Majdanek and are known by name, 170 were prosecuted, due to a rule applied by the West German justice system allowing only those directly involved in the process to be charged with murder.
After the capture of the camp by the Soviet Army, theNKVD retained the ready-made facility as a prison for soldiers of theArmia Krajowa (AK, theHome Army resistance) loyal to thePolish Government-in-Exile and theNarodowe Siły Zbrojne (National Armed Forces) opposed to both German and Soviet occupation. The NKVD like the SS before them used the same facilities to imprison and torture Polish patriots.
On August 19, 1944, in a report to the Polish government-in-exile, the Lublin District of theHome Army (AK) wrote: "Mass arrests of the AK soldiers are being carried out by the NKVD all over the region. These arrests are tolerated by thePolish Committee of National Liberation, and AK soldiers are incarcerated in the Majdanek Camp. Losses of our nation and the Home Army are equal to the losses which we suffered during the German occupation. We are paying with our blood."[38]
Among the prisoners at the Majdanek NKVD Camp wereVolhynian members of the AK, and soldiers of the AK units which had been moving toward Warsaw to join in theWarsaw Uprising. On August 23, 1944, some 250 inmates from Majdanek were transported to the rail stationLublin Tatary. There, all victims were placed in cattle cars and taken to camps inSiberia and other parts of the Soviet Union.[citation needed]
In July 1969, on the 25th anniversary of its liberation, a large monument designed byWiktor Tołkin (a.k.a. Victor Tolkin) was constructed at the site. It consists of two parts: a large gate monument at the camp's entrance and a large mausoleum holding ashes of the victims at its opposite end.
In October 2005, in cooperation with the Majdanek museum, four Majdanek survivors returned to the site and enabled archaeologists to find some 50 objects which had been buried by inmates, including watches, earrings, and wedding rings.[39][40] According to the documentary filmBuried Prayers,[41] this was the largest reported recovery of valuables in a death camp to date. Interviews between government historians and Jewish survivors were not frequent before 2005.[40]
The camp today occupies about half of its original 2.7 square kilometres (670 acres), and—but for the former buildings—is mostly bare. A fire in August 2010 destroyed one of the wooden buildings that was being used as a museum to house seven thousand pairs of prisoners' shoes.[42] The city of Lublin has tripled in size since the end ofWorld War II, and even the main camp is today within the boundaries of the city of Lublin. It is clearly visible to many inhabitants of the city's high-rises, a fact that many visitors remark upon. The gardens of houses and flats border on and overlook the camp.[citation needed]
In 2016, Majdanek State Museum and its branches, Sobibór and Bełżec, had about 210,000 visitors. This was an increase of 10,000 visitors from the previous year. Visitors include Jews, Poles, and others that wish to learn more about the harsh crimes against humanity.[43]
Concentration camp name change 9.04.1943.
Totenkopfverbände.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)The Museum database consists of 56,000 names recorded by German camp administration usually with Germanized or (simplified) phonetic spelling with no diacritics. The Museum provides personal certificates upon written request.
Karl Otto Koch: German commandant of several Nazi concentration camps and husband of the infamousIlse Koch.
