Majdanek concentration camp

Located outside the Polish city of Lublin, the Majdanek concentration camp was a detainment and extermination facility used by Nazi Germany during World War II (1939–1945). Established in 1941 by order of Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler, the camp remained under construction for the entirety of its operational period. Initially used to incarcerate Soviet prisoners of war, the Majdanek concentration camp later served as a forced-labor facility and as a site for the mass extermination of Jewish prisoners and other detainees.

The Majdanek camp remained operational until July 1944, when Soviet forces arrived and liberated it. Experts estimate that half a million prisoners passed through the camp during its active period, with approximately 360,000 losing their lives. The government of Poland later made the Majdanek concentration camp a state museum. It remains open to the public.

Background

World War II was officially declared on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland from the west. Under dual attack from the Soviet Union in the east, Poland surrendered on October 6, 1939. Poland remained occupied for the entirety of the war, with Germany controlling most of the country’s territory. Historians universally agree that the Nazis intended to destroy the Polish nation and culture and to integrate the country’s physical territory into an expanded Germany. To advance this objective, the Nazis built multiple concentration camps throughout Poland. While the Majdanek concentration camp is not as well-known as other such camps in Polish territory, such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka, it was one of the largest. During the course of World War II, the Majdanek concentration camp played major roles in the Nazis’ forced labor and mass extermination programs.

In July 1941, Himmler visited the city of Lublin, which is located in a section of eastern Poland that was under Nazi occupation. Himmler was a top-ranking Nazi, often described as the second-most powerful political figure in Nazi Germany behind Adolf Hitler. Himmler, commonly described as the “architect of the Holocaust,” openly characterized both the Jewish and Slavic peoples as central enemies of the German state. These beliefs, which were shared by Hitler, formed the ideological basis for the Nazi activities that would take place at Majdanek. During his visit to Lublin, Himmler ordered the construction of a concentration camp in the city’s southeastern reaches.

Initially, Himmler intended for the Majdanek camp to serve as a detention facility for Soviet prisoners of war. However, after Nazi Germany officially adopted the “Final Solution” in January 1942, the Majdanek camp evolved into both a forced-labor and mass-extermination facility. The Final Solution was the name given to the Nazi policy of committing genocide against the Jewish people, which resulted in millions of deaths during the Holocaust. While the Holocaust primarily targeted people of Jewish origin, it also extended to Polish civilians and other ethnic groups, including the Soviets and the Roma and Sinti peoples.

Overview

The first detainees sent to Majdanek by the Nazis were approximately two thousand Soviet prisoners of war who arrived at the facility in October 1941. Emaciated and weak, the Soviet prisoners were unable to engage in forced labor, and virtually all of them perished within months. Meanwhile, Nazi forces also routed Jewish prisoners to Majdanek from the Lipowa Street camp in Lublin’s city center, forcing them to assist in the facility’s ongoing construction. During the winter of 1942, Polish civilians who had been rounded up by the Nazis also began to be diverted to Majdanek.

During its first months, Majdanek primarily functioned as a forced-labor facility. In the spring of 1942, the Nazis activated their Final Solution plan and began the mass-scale roundup of Jewish prisoners and others classified as enemies of the German state. Many of these prisoners were sent straight to extermination camps, but some who were deemed to be strong and healthy enough to supply forced labor were sent to Majdanek. Historians estimate that by the summer of 1942, thousands of forced laborers were imprisoned at the camp, where they endured subhuman conditions. Those determined to be too weak to continue working were executed by Nazi guards.

In the autumn of 1942, the Nazis began to close down their extermination center near the Polish village of Belzec. Approximately twenty-five thousand Jewish detainees who had been destined for Belzec were instead sent to Majdanek. Within six months, virtually all of them were dead. The Majdanek camp received its next major influx of prisoners from the Jewish ghettos of Warsaw, the Polish capital, during the spring of 1943. These prisoners, including women and children, were also used as forced laborers.

Beginning in the autumn of 1942 and continuing throughout 1943, the Majdanek concentration camp became the site of mass prisoner exterminations using deadly Zyklon B gas. At least two Zyklon B gas chambers were operational at Majdanek, with some sources stating a third gas chamber that used carbon monoxide also operated there. In addition to functioning as a mass-extermination center, Majdanek was also used as a storage facility for personal items and valuables confiscated from prisoners.

In October 1943, Majdanek became the scene of a Nazi action known as Operation Harvest Festival, during which an estimated 18,000 Jewish prisoners were executed just outside the facility’s grounds. While Nazi soldiers carried out the massacre, music was played over the camp’s loudspeaker systems to muffle the sounds of the killings. At the same time, the Nazis converted six other regional detainment facilities into official Majdanek subcamps.

As Soviet forces pushed deeper into Nazi-occupied Poland during the spring of 1944, the Nazis removed most of the camp’s remaining prisoner population before abandoning the site in July 1944. Soviet troops took the city of Lublin on July 24, 1944, liberating Majdanek. It was the first large Nazi concentration camp to fall to the Allied forces. Though official records have never been obtained, experts believe about 500,000 prisoners of Jewish, Polish, Soviet, Slovakian, Bohemian, Moravian, German, Austrian, French, Dutch, and Greek ethnicity or nationality were detained at Majdanek. Estimates suggest that approximately 360,000 of them died there.

Bibliography

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