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51°13′14″N 22°35′58″E / 51.22056°N 22.59944°E / 51.22056; 22.59944

Majdanek (or Lublin) was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had three gas chambers,[1] two wooden gallows, and some 227 structures in all, placing it among the largest of Nazi concentration camps. Although initially intended for forced labor rather than extermination, it was used to murder an estimated 78,000 people during Operation Reinhard, the German plan to murder all Polish Jews within their own occupied homeland. In operation from 1 October 1941 to 22 July 1944, it was captured nearly intact. The rapid advance of the Soviet Red Army during Operation Bagration prevented the SS from destroying most of its infrastructure, and Deputy Camp Commandant Anton Thernes failed to remove the most incriminating evidence of war crimes.[2]

Key Information

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 a POW camp of the Waffen-SS, based on how it was funded and operated. It was renamed by the Reich Security Main Office as Konzentrationslager 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 the Soviet Union.[4] By autumn, with the war still raging, it had been preserved as a museum. The crematorium ovens and gas chambers were largely intact, serving as some of the best examples of the genocidal policy of Nazi Germany. The site was given national designation in 1965.[5] Today, the Majdanek State Museum is a Holocaust 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 of KL Lublin. It houses a permanent collection of rare artifacts, archival photographs, and testimony.[6]

History

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Construction

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Majdanek
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Location of Majdanek on the map of Lublin ~ 4 kilometres (2.5 mi)

Konzentrationslager Lublin was established in October 1941 on the orders of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, forwarded to Odilo Globocnik soon after Himmler's visit to Lublin on 17–20 July 1941 in the course of Operation 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 Soviet prisoners-of-war were captured during the Battle 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 in Auschwitz-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 2,000 Red 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 a typhus epidemic broke out, and by January 1942 all the slave laborers – POWs as well as Polish 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]

Operation

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Further information: The Holocaust in Poland
Aerial photograph of Majdanek (June 24, 1944). From bottom: the barracks under deconstruction with visible chimney stacks still standing, planks of wood piled up along the supply road, intact barracks.

In July 1942, Himmler visited Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, the three secret extermination camps built specifically for Operation Reinhard to eliminate Polish 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 of occupied Poland, which constituted the Nazi Generalgouvernement, 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 at Kraków, Lwów, Zamość and Warsaw, 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 of Trawnikis.[10] According to the Majdanek Museum, the gas chambers began operation in September 1942.[11]

Arrival of new inmates.
Zyklon B stored in the camp.

There are two identical buildings at Majdanek where Zyklon 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 as the one in Warsaw (which became a concentration camp after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising), or sent to labor camps such as Majdanek, where they worked primarily at the Steyr-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 the Ravensbrück concentration camp, included Elsa Ehrich, Hermine Boettcher-Brueckner, Hermine Braunsteiner, Hildegard Lächert, Rosy Suess (Süss), Elisabeth Knoblich-Ernst, Charlotte Karla Mayer-Woellert, and Gertrud 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, SS Untersturmführer, 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 the Polish Red Cross and Central 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]

Cremation facilities

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Cremation facilities at Majdanek
Smoke rising from Majdanek, October 1943
Red Army soldiers examining the ovens of the burned-down New Crematorium, following the camp's liberation, summer 1944
Preserved original ovens in the reconstructed building of the New Crematorium (closeup)

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 to Sonderkommando 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-called First Crematorium had two ovens which were brought to Majdanek from the Sachsenhausen 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 the New Crematorium. It was a T-shaped wooden building with five ovens, fueled with coke and built by the Heinrich Kori GmbH 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]

Aktion Erntefest

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Operation Reinhard continued until early November 1943, when the last Jewish prisoners of the Majdanek system of subcamps from the District Lublin in the General Government were massacred by the firing squads of Trawniki men during Operation "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 to Sonderkommando 1005, where they had to exhume the same bodies for cremation. These men were then executed. The 311 women were subsequently sent to Auschwitz, where they were murdered by gas. By the end of Aktion Erntefest ("Harvest Festival"), Majdanek had only 71 Jews left out of the total number of 6,562 prisoners still alive.[9]

Inconspicuous structure for murder. Showers (left), and similarly built gas chambers (right).

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 with Zyklon 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 of Tesch & Stabenow.[20]

In addition, Commandant Rudolf 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]

Evacuation

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In late July 1944, with Soviet forces rapidly approaching Lublin, the Germans hastily evacuated the camp and partially destroyed the crematoria before Soviet Red Army troops arrived on July 24, 1944.[23][24] Majdanek is the best-preserved camp of the Holocaust 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 been forcibly 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]

Victims

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The official estimate of 78,000 victims, of those 59,000 Jews, was determined in 2005 by Tomasz Kranz [pl], director of the Research Department of the Majdanek State Museum, calculated following the discovery of the Höfle 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 Judge Zdzisław Łukaszkiewicz in 1948, who approximated a figure of 360,000 victims. It was followed by an estimate of around 235,000 victims by Czesław 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 the Holocaust 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 of Operation 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]

Guard towers along the barbed-wire double-fence on the Majdanek camp perimeter

The Soviets initially grossly overestimated the number of murders, claiming at the Nuremberg 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 the Canadian Jewish Congress,[31][32] visited Majdanek on August 28, 1944. The following day he sent a telegram to Saul 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 for Auschwitz 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]

Majdanek commandants
Name Rank Service and Notes
Karl-Otto Koch SS-Standartenführer Camp commandant from October 1941 to August 1942. Tried and executed by the SS 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 in Allied 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 the SS 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 the Dachau 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 the Auschwitz trial in Kraków, sentenced to death and hanged on January 28, 1948.[34]
  • The second in command, throughout, was SS-Obersturmführer Anton Thernes. Tried at the Majdanek trials in Lublin, found guilty of crimes against humanity, sentenced to death by hanging and executed on December 3, 1944.[34]

Aftermath

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The Memorial
Memorial at the "entry gate" to the camp. The symbolic Pylon is meant to represent mangled bodies.[35]
The Mausoleum erected in 1969 contains ashes and remains of cremated victims, collected into a mound after liberation of the camp in 1944.

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 the Majdanek 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 of Polish 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]

Main article: Majdanek trials

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 two kapos 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.

Soviet NKVD use

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After the capture of the camp by the Soviet Army, the NKVD retained the ready-made facility as a prison for soldiers of the Armia Krajowa (AK, the Home Army resistance) loyal to the Polish Government-in-Exile and the Narodowe 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 the Home 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 the Polish 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 were Volhynian members of the AK, and soldiers of the AK units which had been moving toward Warsaw to join in the Warsaw Uprising. On August 23, 1944, some 250 inmates from Majdanek were transported to the rail station Lublin Tatary. There, all victims were placed in cattle cars and taken to camps in Siberia and other parts of the Soviet Union.[citation needed]

Commemoration

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Map of the Majdanek State Museum site

In July 1969, on the 25th anniversary of its liberation, a large monument designed by Wiktor 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 film Buried 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 of World 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]

Notable inmates

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Henio Zytomirski, July 5, 1939

See also

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References

[edit]
[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Majdanek concentration camp

View on Grokipedia
from Grokipedia
Majdanek, officially designated Konzentrationslager , was a Nazi German concentration and established on the southeastern outskirts of , , following Heinrich Himmler's order on July 21, 1941, with construction commencing in early October of that year. Operated by the SS under the broader SS and police structure in the Lublin district, the camp initially focused on providing forced labor for industrial projects and eastern expansion efforts, but evolved into a key facility within for the systematic murder of through gassing, mass shootings, starvation, and disease. The camp processed approximately 150,000 prisoners of diverse nationalities, predominantly deported from occupied and other regions, with infrastructure including , gas chambers operational from late , and crematoria for body disposal. A defining event was (Erntefest) on November 3, 1943, during which SS forces machine-gunned around 18,000 in pits at Majdanek and nearby sites, marking one of the largest single-day massacres in . Death toll estimates have varied significantly; early post-liberation assessments by Soviet commissions reached inflated figures exceeding 1 million, later revised downward by Polish and Western historians based on transport records, camp documents, and archaeological evidence, converging on 78,000 to 110,000 total victims, the vast majority , highlighting the pitfalls of relying on wartime propaganda-derived sources without empirical verification. Majdanek remained operational until its partial evacuation in April 1944 amid advancing Soviet forces, and was liberated by the on July 22–24, 1944, as the first major Nazi camp encountered by Allied troops, found largely intact with warehouses of victim belongings, enabling immediate documentation of atrocities through photographs and survivor accounts. This preservation facilitated post-war trials, including those at , but also sparked debates over forensic evidence like residues and capacities, underscoring the need for rigorous, document-based analysis over narrative-driven interpretations from ideologically aligned investigators.

Establishment

Planning and Construction

The planning for the Majdanek concentration camp originated from Heinrich Himmler's directive during his inspection of on July 20–21, 1941, when he instructed SS and Police Leader Odilo to construct a camp for 25,000 to 50,000 Soviet prisoners of war on the southeastern outskirts of the city, near the Majdan Tatarski district. This facility was intended to provide forced labor for SS and police workshops, construction of an SS housing estate, and broader Germanization efforts in occupied and the , aligning with the economic exploitation of POWs captured in . SS-Sturmbannführer was appointed to oversee organizational preparations, under the auspices of the SS Central Construction Main Office (Zentralbauleitung der Waffen-SS und Polizei ). Construction began in early October 1941 on a 516-hectare site, initially utilizing around 2,000 Soviet POWs transported from in Lamsdorf as forced laborers to clear land and erect structures. The layout encompassed plans for 227 wooden barracks across multiple fields, extensive barbed-wire fencing totaling 5,600 meters, 25,000 meters of sewers, and 4,050 meters of paved roads, with administrative offices and quarters established in proper, including at 12 Ogrodowa for the commandant headquarters. By November 1941, the first five camp compounds were leveled and partially operational, with capacity for approximately 10,000 prisoners, though initial expansions prioritized labor infrastructure over permanent extermination facilities. The project's rapid initiation reflected the SS's broader strategy to repurpose POW camps into multifunctional sites amid labor shortages, with Koch assuming full command as the first by late 1941; subsequent phases incorporated Jewish forced laborers seized locally starting December 12, 1941, to accelerate building efforts.

Initial Setup and Layout

The establishment of the Majdanek concentration camp, officially known as Konzentrationslager (KL) Lublin, was ordered by , , on July 21, 1941, during his visit to in German-occupied Poland. Himmler directed SS and Police Leader to prepare a camp for 25,000 to 50,000 prisoners to provide forced labor for SS workshops and infrastructure supporting German settlement in the east. Construction commenced in early October 1941 on a site southeast of near the Majdan Tatarski district, utilizing approximately 2,000 Soviet prisoners of war who arrived to perform the initial building work. The first commandant was SS-Obersturmbannführer , who oversaw operations from October 1941 until August 1942. The camp's layout was designed for efficient control and labor exploitation, organized into multiple sections known as "fields" (Felder), with Field I initially housing administrative buildings and prisoner . Wooden , originally intended as horse stables, were erected in rows within these fields, each capable of holding several hundred prisoners under overcrowded conditions with minimal protection from . The perimeter consisted of a double barbed-wire fence, electrified for security, reinforced by approximately 18 to 20 guard towers positioned at regular intervals to enable SS oversight. The main entrance faced the Lublin-Lwów road, facilitating transports and access for forced labor details dispatched to nearby sites. Initial expansions included garrison quarters and commandant offices constructed between July 1942 and spring 1943, integrating SS administrative and living facilities within the camp grounds to centralize command. The site's , on relatively flat , allowed for straightforward division into labor-oriented zones, with early sections like Field V designated for Wehrmacht-related projects. This structure prioritized containment and productivity over prisoner welfare, reflecting the 's utilitarian approach to camp design.

Operations

Prisoner Categories and Intake

The Majdanek concentration camp held approximately 150,000 prisoners of diverse nationalities and categories, including Soviet prisoners of war, , Poles, and smaller groups such as , , , and others transported for forced labor, political punishment, or extermination. Initial prisoners in October 1941 were around 2,000 Soviet POWs, selected for camp construction under harsh conditions that led to high mortality from disease and starvation by early 1942. formed the largest category, numbering 74,000 to 90,000, primarily Polish from the and region, alongside transports from (about 8,500), , , Bohemia-Moravia, and later ghettos in and Białystok; many arrived between spring 1942 and 1943 for labor or immediate killing. Poles, the second-largest group, included political prisoners, resistance members, hostages, and civilians interned as punishment, with significant arrivals from prisons in , , and local districts starting in early 1943, alongside families displaced from the Zamość region in summer 1943. Other categories encompassed villagers deported en masse in spring 1943 as reprisal, Soviet civilians and invalids after , and transit groups like sick prisoners from western European camps (around 7,000 French, Italian, and Dutch) in late 1943–1944. Prisoners arrived primarily via large transports in cattle cars without food or water, causing deaths en route, with bodies often removed at station; smaller local groups from the Lublin district traveled by truck, while trains sometimes halted at the nearby Flugplatz subcamp before forced marches to Majdanek. Upon arrival, Jewish transports underwent preliminary selections by physicians, directing children, the elderly, and those deemed unfit for labor directly to gas chambers without registration or recording. Selected prisoners for labor were stripped of possessions, subjected to humiliating disinfection and bathing in designated (41 for men, 42 for women), had their shorn and sold (totaling 730 kg from September 1942 to ), received mismatched camp uniforms, and were assigned numbers replacing their names for identification. Registered inmates were then quartered in , with categories distinguished by standard Nazi camp markings such as colored triangles for political prisoners (red), criminals (green), or (yellow star overlay), though were often prioritized for extermination regardless of subcategory.

Camp Conditions and Forced Labor

Prisoners at Majdanek endured severely inhumane living conditions characterized by overcrowding, inadequate shelter, and minimal sustenance, which contributed significantly to high mortality rates from starvation, disease, and exhaustion. Barracks were often hastily constructed or unfinished, with separate facilities designated for Jewish inmates, leading to extreme density that exacerbated the spread of infections such as typhus epidemics, which decimated populations periodically. Sanitation was rudimentary, with limited access to clean water and facilities, fostering rampant dysentery and other illnesses alongside brutal physical punishments and arbitrary shootings by guards, particularly targeting the weak during harsh winters of 1941–1942. Daily routines began at 5 or 6 a.m., involving rapid preparation, roll calls, and meager meals consisting of a small portion of dry black bread and ersatz herbal "tea" or watery soup, providing insufficient calories—typically under 1,000 per day—to sustain labor, resulting in rapid physical deterioration. Forced labor formed a central mechanism of prisoner exploitation and gradual extermination at Majdanek, with inmates compelled into grueling tasks under oversight to support the German war economy and camp infrastructure. Assignments included camp construction, handling manure and waste, and production in on-site workshops operated by enterprises such as Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke (DAW), which manufactured furniture and equipment using prisoner labor, and Ostindustrie GmbH, an firm exploiting Jewish workers for munitions and textiles in the district. Labor kommandos operated 10–12 hours daily, often in external details at nearby industries or subcamps, without protective clothing or tools, accompanied by constant beatings from Kapos and guards to enforce output. This "extermination through work" policy, intensified after 1942 with the influx of Jewish deportees, led to deaths from compounding and , though select skilled prisoners occasionally received marginally better rations to maintain . Weakened individuals unfit for labor faced immediate selection for execution, underscoring labor's dual role in economic utility and demographic destruction.

Methods of Killing and Extermination Facilities

The primary extermination facilities at Majdanek concentration camp consisted of gas chambers, execution ditches, and a for body disposal. Between October 1942 and September 1943, the SS constructed two to three gas chambers specifically to murder prisoners unable to perform labor, targeting mainly selected during constant camp inspections. These chambers operated from autumn 1942 until early September 1943, employing in at least two units and —likely from engine exhaust—in another. Victims, often emaciated or terminally ill held in "Gammelblocks" (old blocks) for deprivation, were herded into the chambers under deception or force, with gassings confirmed by survivor testimonies and in-camp resistance reports. Mass shootings supplemented gassings as a key killing method, utilizing pits and ditches excavated near the . Firing squads executed prisoners routinely for infractions or weakness, but the scale escalated during Operation Erntefest on November 3, 1943, when SS and police forces shot approximately 18,000 — including at least 8,000 from Majdanek—in prepared ditches adjacent to the camp's extermination area, marking the largest single-day, single-site in . Bodies from both gassings and shootings were initially interred in mass graves, later exhumed and cremated to conceal evidence. The , operational from late , featured multiple ovens capable of incinerating remains from daily killings, though open-air pyres were also employed during peak periods to handle overflow. Ashes were mixed with soil or waste, sometimes repurposed as fertilizer, with post-liberation excavations yielding around 1,300 cubic meters of ash-compost for purposes. Additional ad hoc methods included hangings from wooden , phenol injections, and drownings in pits, but these lacked dedicated facilities and were less systematic than gassings or shootings. Historical accounts derive from physical remnants, such as preserved chamber doors and oven casts, alongside contemporaneous documents and eyewitness reports preserved by institutions like the Majdanek State Museum and the United States Holocaust Museum.

Major Events

Aktion Erntefest

Aktion Erntefest, or , was a mass execution operation conducted by SS and police units on November 3, 1943, targeting Jewish prisoners in the Lublin District of occupied Poland, including those at Majdanek concentration camp and associated labor camps. The action resulted in the deaths of approximately 42,000 to 43,000 across sites such as Majdanek, Poniatowa, and Trawniki, marking one of the largest single-day massacres in . At Majdanek, over 18,000 prisoners—primarily from the camp and its subcamps—were killed as part of this effort to liquidate remaining Jewish forced labor in the region following uprisings at extermination camps like Sobibor and Treblinka. The operation was ordered by to eliminate around 45,000 Jewish laborers deemed a security risk after recent prisoner revolts, aiming to prevent further resistance and consolidate control in the General Government territory. At Majdanek, preparations included confining Jewish prisoners after morning roll-call and surrounding the camp with armed SS personnel transported by truck. Jewish inmates were systematically separated from non-Jews, under the pretext of being reassigned to work details, and marched in groups to pre-dug trenches on the camp's outskirts. Executions at Majdanek commenced at dawn on November 3 and continued throughout the day, with victims forced to lie in the trenches and shot by machine-gun fire from guards. To drown out screams and gunfire, loudspeakers broadcast music across the camp. The killings were completed within approximately 24 hours at the site, with bodies subsequently burned in pyres to conceal evidence. This event decimated the Jewish prisoner population at Majdanek, reducing it to a small number of survivors hidden or spared temporarily for labor purposes.

Evacuation and Soviet Liberation

As Soviet forces advanced toward in early 1944 during the broader Eastern Front offensive, the SS began systematic evacuation of Majdanek's prisoner population to prevent their liberation and to redistribute labor. Transports commenced in January 1944, with thousands of inmates—primarily , Poles, and Soviet POWs—relocated by rail to western camps including Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen, Ravensbrück, Natzweiler, , and Bergen-Belsen. These transfers, often under brutal conditions with high mortality from starvation, disease, and executions en route, reduced the camp's population significantly by May 1944. By early June 1944, following the initial phases of launched on June 22, Majdanek held only a fraction of its prior inmates, estimated at around 1,000-2,000 weakened individuals deemed unfit for transport. Unlike later evacuations from camps such as Auschwitz, which involved extensive es in freezing conditions, Majdanek's dispersals were predominantly by train earlier in the year, though some smaller groups endured forced foot marches with summary killings of stragglers. The rapid Soviet advance precluded a full-scale death march from the site itself. On July 22, 1944, as the Red Army's 2nd Tank Corps closed in, German guards initiated partial liquidation efforts, igniting fires in barracks, destroying select documents, and exhuming some mass graves in a hasty bid to conceal evidence; however, the pace of the offensive left most infrastructure—including gas chambers, crematoria, and warehouses stocked with victims' shoes, clothing, and personal effects—intact. Soviet troops entered the camp perimeter that night and fully secured it by July 23-24, 1944, encountering fewer than 500 survivors, many bedridden from and . The liberation marked the first encounter by Allied forces with Nazi concentration camp largely preserved in its operational state, enabling immediate of extermination facilities and prompting Soviet-led investigations that, while later critiqued for exaggerations of victim totals (claiming 1.5 million against scholarly estimates of 78,000-80,000), confirmed the site's role in systematic murder through on-site artifacts and survivor accounts. testimonies described guards fleeing without organized evacuation of the remnants, abandoning the ill to their fate.

Victims and Casualties

Demographic Breakdown

The victims of Majdanek concentration camp consisted predominantly of Jews, who accounted for the majority of the approximately 78,000 deaths recorded between 1941 and 1944. Of these, at least 59,000 were Jews, primarily Polish Jews deported from the Lublin region, Warsaw Ghetto, Białystok, and other areas in the General Government, as well as smaller groups from Slovakia and elsewhere. This figure reflects transports beginning in late 1941 with Jewish forced laborers from Lublin, escalating through 1942–1943 with mass arrivals including over 3,000 men from Warsaw in August–September 1942 and a peak of 17,527 Jewish prisoners in mid-May 1943. At least 74,000 Jews passed through the camp overall, with the remainder either transferred or surviving until liberation. Non-Jewish victims numbered around 19,000, comprising mostly Poles and Byelorussians, alongside smaller contingents of Soviet prisoners of war and other nationalities. Poles included political prisoners, intellectuals, and civilians from the area arrested under German occupation policies, while Soviet POWs formed an early group of about 2,000 brought in October 1941 for construction labor, many perishing from and exposure. These estimates, derived from death books, SS records, transport lists, and survivor testimonies, represent a 2005 revision by the State Museum at Majdanek, downward from earlier postwar figures exceeding 200,000–360,000 that lacked rigorous archival verification.
Victim GroupEstimated DeathsPrimary Origins
Jews~59,000Polish Jews from Lublin, Warsaw, Białystok; Slovaks (~7,600 imprisoned)
Non-Jews~19,000Poles, Byelorussians, Soviet POWs
Total~78,000-

Death Toll Estimates and Historical Revisions

Initial estimates of the death toll at Majdanek, provided by Soviet investigators immediately following the camp's liberation on July 24, 1944, claimed approximately 1.5 million victims, a figure derived largely from extrapolations of crematoria capacity and the volume of ash piles observed on site, without systematic verification of prisoner records or transports. These numbers were propagated in early Soviet reports and reflected a tendency toward inflation in communist-era documentation to emphasize Nazi atrocities for propagandistic purposes, though they lacked empirical grounding in surviving administrative documents. Post-war Polish investigations under communist administration initially adjusted the estimate downward to around 360,000 total deaths by the , incorporating some camp records but still relying on incomplete data and assumptions about unrecorded gassings and shootings, particularly during events like Aktion Erntefest in , which alone accounted for up to 18,000 executions. By the , State Museum at Majdanek publications cited figures near 235,000, based on broader inclusions of subcamps and estimated inflows, yet these remained contested due to inconsistencies with fragmentary SS transport logs and death registers that survived the camp's partial destruction. A significant revision occurred in 2005 when Tomasz Kranz, then director of the Research Department at the State Museum at Majdanek, published a detailed using declassified archival sources, including SS prisoner intake and transfer records, death books covering over 50,000 registered fatalities, and cross-referenced transport data from originating ghettos and other camps. Kranz's methodology emphasized verifiable inflows minus outflows, accounting for documented executions, disease-related deaths, and forced marches, yielding a total of approximately 78,000 deaths, with about 59,000 Jewish victims comprising the majority. This figure aligns with earlier assessments by historians like , who in 1961 estimated around 50,000 Jewish deaths based on partial demographic breakdowns, and has been corroborated by subsequent studies prioritizing primary documents over anecdotal survivor testimonies or capacity-based extrapolations. The downward revisions reflect a shift toward empirical reconstruction from Nazi bureaucratic records, which, while incomplete due to deliberate destruction in , provide a more reliable causal chain than initial overestimations influenced by wartime urgency and ideological agendas in Soviet and early Polish . Contemporary consensus among scholars, including those at and the , accepts the 78,000 total as the most defensible, underscoring Majdanek's role primarily as a hybrid labor and extermination site rather than a pure death factory like those in , with deaths distributed across gassings (about 18,000), shootings, , , and overwork from October 1941 to July .

Post-War Aftermath

Soviet Investigations and Use

The Majdanek concentration camp was liberated by advancing units of the Soviet Red Army on July 22–23, 1944, during , with approximately 500 emaciated prisoners found surviving in the camp. Immediately following liberation, Soviet authorities initiated forensic examinations of the site, documenting gas chambers, crematoria, mass graves, and warehouses containing victims' belongings, which confirmed systematic extermination activities under Nazi control. A joint Polish-Soviet Extraordinary Commission was established in late to investigate Nazi crimes at Majdanek, comprising Soviet, Polish, and international forensic experts who exhumed remains, analyzed ashes, and interviewed survivors. The commission's September 1944 communiqué asserted that approximately 1.5 million people had been murdered at the camp, primarily through gassing with and , shootings, and , attributing this to deliberate Nazi policy. This estimate, derived from extrapolations of crematoria capacity, ash volumes, and partial grave excavations rather than comprehensive records, has been widely critiqued by subsequent historians as severely inflated—modern scholarship, based on transport lists, camp documents, and demographic cross-referencing, places total deaths at around 78,000—reflecting Soviet wartime incentives to amplify figures for propaganda and to equate Nazi atrocities with broader anti-fascist narratives. In the months after liberation, the Soviet repurposed portions of the Majdanek grounds as an facility starting in August 1944, detaining Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) soldiers captured during the suppression, members of the Peasants' Battalions, ethnic Germans, and individuals suspected of collaboration with the Nazis or anti-Soviet activities. This camp operated until late 1944, with conditions involving forced labor, inadequate food, and disease leading to an undetermined number of deaths among internees, though specific casualty figures remain sparsely documented due to limited Soviet records; it was closed as Soviet control solidified in the region and Polish communist authorities assumed oversight. The site's dual role—first as Nazi extermination facility, then Soviet venue—highlights continuities in repressive infrastructure amid shifting occupiers.

Nazi Personnel Trials

The first post-war trial of Majdanek personnel occurred in from November 27 to December 2, 1944, before a Soviet-Polish , targeting six SS officials accused of war crimes and committed at the camp. The defendants included SS-Oberscharführer , who served as Lagerführer responsible for prisoner oversight and executions; SS-Unterscharführer Erich Mußfeldt, involved in camp administration and gassings; and four other guards: Bedrich Helm, Herbert Roth, Hans Schmidt, and Wilhelm Kowalzick. All six were convicted based on survivor testimonies and camp evidence, with the court emphasizing their direct roles in selections, shootings, and mass killings; sentences of death by hanging were imposed and carried out publicly in on December 3, 1944. This proceeding, conducted under Soviet oversight shortly after the Red Army's liberation of the camp on , 1944, has been critiqued for its expedited nature and potential alignment with wartime , though it established early legal precedent for prosecuting camp staff. Subsequent Polish trials in the late addressed additional Majdanek personnel, including a 1946-1947 proceeding in against four female SS guards charged with auxiliary roles in prisoner abuse and executions. These cases, part of broader Polish efforts to adjudicate Nazi crimes amid reconstruction and Soviet influence, resulted in convictions for in murders, with penalties including long terms and executions, though records indicate procedural irregularities influenced by the emerging communist regime's political priorities. Commandants like Karl Koch and , previously executed by the SS in 1945 for internal corruption unrelated to extermination policies, were not retried , limiting accountability to lower- and mid-level staff in early proceedings. The most extensive trial unfolded in at the Higher Regional Court from November 26, 1975, to June 30, 1981, involving 16 defendants—primarily guards and administrative personnel, including seven women—who served at Majdanek between 1941 and 1944. Prosecutors presented evidence from approximately 350 witnesses, focusing on individual acts of murder, such as shootings during Aktion Erntefest on November 3, 1943, when up to 18,000 were killed, and routine beatings leading to deaths; the trial spanned 474 sessions and examined the camp's role in systematic extermination. Outcomes included convictions for eight defendants on charges of murder, with sentences ranging from three to twelve years' imprisonment—such as twelve years for guard for multiple killings—while four were acquitted due to insufficient proof of direct involvement, and others received lesser penalties or . Critics, including survivors, argued the sentences were disproportionately lenient given the scale of atrocities, reflecting West German courts' emphasis on proven personal initiative over collective complicity, a pattern in post-war jurisprudence that prioritized procedural rigor amid fading witness memories and evidentiary challenges. No further major trials of Majdanek staff occurred after 1981, as most higher-ranking officers had evaded capture or died earlier.

Preservation as a Site

The State Museum at Majdanek was founded in on the grounds of the former Nazi concentration camp, mere months after its liberation by Soviet forces on July 23, 1944. This establishment marked the creation of the world's first memorial museum dedicated to a concentration camp site, with initial efforts centered on documenting atrocities through preserved artifacts and survivor testimonies. Majdanek's preservation benefited from its intact state at liberation, allowing retention of original infrastructure including barracks, watchtowers, gas chambers, and crematoria, which distinguish it as one of the best-preserved Nazi camp sites. The has prioritized conservation of these elements, such as the 2017 restoration of the Mausoleum's mound containing victims' ashes, to maintain authenticity for educational and commemorative purposes. Ongoing initiatives include scientific analysis of building materials from structures like Barrack No. 41 and the bunker, conducted to develop strategies for long-term protection against degradation. These efforts ensure the site's role as a permanent and , hosting exhibitions, annual commemorations, and visits by over 200,000 people annually to convey the camp's .

Controversies and Scholarly Debates

Gas Chambers and Extermination Claims

The alleged gas chambers at Majdanek were located in the Bath and Disinfection Building (Bade- und Desinfektionsgebäude), particularly Barracks 41 and 42, consisting of several rooms equipped with features such as reinforced doors, peepholes, and ventilation systems. These structures were claimed post-liberation to have been used for homicidal gassings employing from engine exhaust and pesticide, with the Polish-Soviet Extraordinary Commission reporting in 1944 that they facilitated mass extermination, estimating up to 1.5 million total victims at the camp including gassings. However, the Commission's findings, influenced by wartime needs, have been critiqued for lacking documentary corroboration and relying on exaggerated eyewitness accounts. Engineering analysis of the chambers reveals design elements consistent with delousing facilities rather than airtight extermination setups: rooms I and III lacked ceiling vents for introduction, chamber IV featured an unsealable window, and overall dimensions (e.g., 6.10 × 5.62 m for one) were inadequate for mass killings without efficient ventilation or sealing modifications evident in original 1942 construction plans from the SS Central Construction Office. deliveries to Majdanek, totaling approximately 7,711 kg between 1942 and 1944, align with documented needs for disinfection in a camp plagued by epidemics, as per SS hygiene reports and orders dated July 29, 1942, for 6,000 cans initially. Forensic examinations have found no significant residues in the walls of purported homicidal chambers, unlike Prussian blue stains in confirmed delousing areas, undermining claims of repeated large-scale human gassings. Eyewitness testimonies alleging mass gassings, such as those from describing selections for "showers" turning lethal, exhibit inconsistencies in dates, victim numbers, and methods, often emerging post-1943 amid resistance rumors rather than contemporaneous records. German documents, including the Pohl Report of September 30, 1943, and death books recording 6,716 fatalities from May to September 1942, attribute mortality primarily to , exhaustion, and executions by , with no explicit orders or logs for systematic gassing operations. Scholarly revisions, drawing on these primary sources, estimate total camp deaths at around 78,000, with gassings—if any—limited to sporadic or experimental uses rather than the industrial scale posited in early accounts, as the camp's primary function remained labor exploitation under SS economic directives. The crematorium's capacity, calculated at 100-114 bodies per day using coke or , further constrains feasibility of disposing of mass gassing victims, as claims of incinerating thousands daily exceed technical limits without evidence of auxiliary pits or fuel quantities in records. While mainstream institutions like the maintain the extermination narrative based on survivor recollections and Allied reports, independent scrutiny of physical remnants and archival materials prioritizes causal factors like epidemics—evidenced by high mortality rates of 7.67% for men in August 1943—over unsubstantiated homicidal claims lacking empirical chemical or documentary support.

Role as Labor Versus Death Camp

Majdanek, established on October 1, 1941, initially functioned as a for Soviet captives tasked with constructing the facility itself, reflecting its primary orientation toward forced labor to support SS and police infrastructure projects in the Lublin district. By , Jewish prisoners from the and Lipowa camp were incorporated to expand labor operations, including camp building, agricultural work, and workshops producing armaments and other goods for German enterprises. Approximately 2,000 Soviet POWs initiated construction, but most perished from exhaustion and exposure by February 1942, after which Polish and Jewish forced laborers dominated, with transports such as 7,000 Slovak Jews in spring 1942 and 18,000–22,000 from the in spring 1943 explicitly selected for work in SS-affiliated factories like East Industries, Inc. Prisoner labor extended to sorting looted clothing from killing centers, underscoring Majdanek's integration into the broader Nazi economic exploitation system rather than isolated . Unlike dedicated extermination camps such as Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka—designed solely for immediate gassing without labor selection—Majdanek operated under the SS Concentration Camps Inspectorate with a structured selection process upon arrival, assigning able-bodied prisoners to labor detachments while culling the unfit through shootings or, from October 1942, sporadic gassings in three chambers using . Gassings at Majdanek targeted smaller groups, such as sick prisoners or specific transports, and accounted for only a fraction of deaths—estimated in the low thousands—contrasting with the hundreds of thousands killed systematically in Reinhard camps. Mass executions, primarily by shooting, peaked during on November 3, 1943, when approximately 18,000 Jews, including 8,000 from Majdanek, were killed in pits near the camp to eliminate remnants of the Lublin Jewish labor network, but these were episodic responses to shifting wartime priorities rather than the camp's foundational purpose. Of roughly 150,000 prisoners registered at Majdanek from 1941 to 1944, an estimated 78,000 died, with about 59,000 being ; most fatalities stemmed from , (e.g., epidemics), overwork, and punitive killings of the ill or resistant, aligning more closely with the dynamics of labor-oriented concentration camps like Dachau or Buchenwald than pure death facilities. Historians, drawing on SS records and survivor accounts preserved in archives like Arolsen, classify Majdanek as a hybrid concentration camp emphasizing slave labor for the war economy—supplying the and other sectors—while incorporating extermination elements under Odilo Globocnik's oversight, particularly for liquidating unproductive Jewish populations in the region. This dual role intensified in 1942–1943, when 74,000–90,000 were deported there, but empirical evidence from transport logs indicates labor selection predominated for most arrivals, with death as a deliberate attrition tool rather than the endpoint for the majority. Postwar revisions to inflated Soviet-era estimates (e.g., from 1.5 million to under 80,000 total deaths) further highlight that Majdanek's mortality, while horrific, derived substantially from labor camp conditions rather than industrialized gassing on the scale of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

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