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Majdanek
Historical Background
Introduction
Majdanek was a Nazi concentration camp and
extermination center
outside Lublin,
Poland. In July 1941
SS Chief
Heinrich Himmler, a central architect of the
“Final Solution” and one of Hitler’s main advisors,
ordered the construction of a concentration camp at Majdanek. The first Jewish prisoners arrived there in October 1941.
The Majdanek camp extended over 667 acres of land on the Lublin-Zamosc-Chelm highway. It was surrounded by a high-voltage double barbed wire electrified fence and 19 watch-towers to prevent escape. The camp, divided into five sections, had 22 prisoner barracks. Majdanek also had
gas chambers, wooden gallows, and a crematorium.
Adjoining the camp were workshops, storehouses, laundries, and other service areas. A larger crematorium was added in September 1943.
Majdanek is classified as both an extermination center and concentration camp because although many prisoners were murdered
there immediately upon arrival, those who were not killed became a part of a camp population subject to forced labor, torture, and very
difficult living conditions.
Prisoners at Majdanek
The larger groups of prisoners—deported from prisons, ghettos and camps— were deported to Majdanek in
tightly closed, crowded freight trains, deprived of sanitary facilities, food or water. Smaller transports of prisoners were deported in trucks.
In this testimony, Adam Boren, who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1925, describes the trip to Majdanek and arrival at the camp:
“…We were then marched to the Umschlagplatz. The Umschlagplatz was the old railroad station in Warsaw and was
used by the Germans for loading the captured Jews into trains, cattle trains for shipment to the concentration and murder camps. We
stood in a building in the Umschlagplatz for a day, crowded on a floor with not sufficient place to stand.
The following day we were all herded, about 60 people to a cattle car and the cars were locked. The train proceeded. I was running a
high temperature, with my wounds getting badly infected, partly lying, partially standing in the cattle car.
After several hours of travel we arrived at the Majdanek concentration camp, which is located just outside the town of Lublin in Poland.
We were herded out and on the run made to enter the camp.”
Source: Yad Vashem Archives, O.69/198
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Hadassah Marcus, who was among the first Jewish prisoners to arrive at Majdanek, recalls:
“When the dawn came we saw that we were being led not to Treblinka, but we were being led in the direction of Lublin, that means
to Majdanek. We arrived in Lublin, and from there, guarded each fifth row by two soldiers with large dogs, with rifles ready, we were
led to Majdanek, which is a few kilometers from Lublin. When we arrived in Majdanek we were the first transport of Jews, of Jewish women.
Men were already there, Slovakian Jews.”
Source: Yad Vashem Archives O.36/52 |
Nechamah Epstein, who was imprisoned in a number of Nazi camps during the Holocaust, states:
“We were taken off at the Majdanek lager (barrack). We were all lined up. There were many who were shot. They were
taken down, those who were still alive…Everything was separated. The women, the young women, were sent to the Majdanek
lager. The men were taken to another lager. The children and the mothers were led to the crematorium…
We never laid eyes on them again.”
Source: Yad Vashem Archives, O.36/50 |
After passing through the camp gate, new arrivals at Majdanek were forced to surrender their possessions.
They were then brutally rushed, accompanied by incessant shouting and beating, to be bathed, disinfected and shaved, and to receive ragged
prisoner clothing and an identifying number.
After disinfection, the new prisoners were sent to their compounds. Their days at Majdanek were filled from morning until evening roll
call with the maximum amount of work possible. They were constantly hurried, performing back-breaking labor, always afraid of beatings.
They slept in crowded, dirty barracks. Hadassah Marcus remembers:
“We lived under very hazardous conditions. As Jews…They took away our shoes, and we had to stand all night on a field barefoot. Majdanek
has a climate which has strong winds, unheard of, or great heats. Throughout the night a frost of ten centimeters thick lay on the ground. They
examined our feet, if we didn’t put a piece of paper underneath. Afterwards, in the morning, we had to run, not walk, to work, chased after by a
young female SS woman with a giant dog.
…We were bitten, our clothes torn off. And when one returned to the lager bitten, the next day he was taken to the crematorium,
because people who weren’t completely well, or if one had the slightest rash on himself, didn’t have the right to live…We were given absolutely
no medical help. Whoever gave us the least bit of help was punished.”
Source: Yad Vashem Archives O.36/52 |
Nechamah Epstien describes the roll call (appell) at Majdanek:
“In the morning, at six in the morning, came in a German SS woman. We were lying on the beds, grieved, with great worries, thinking
where the mothers were, where the fathers and the children were. We were crying. Then came in a German woman at six in the morning
and beat us to go out to the appell. On the appell it could happen that we would stand four, five hours…
People were being kept so long because everybody did not know yet what…what this was about. Many children of about sixteen years
hid in an attic. They were afraid to come out. They thought they were going to be shot.
And for that, that they had hidden, we stood five hours as a punishment. Later nobody hid any more.”
Source: Yad Vashem Archives, O.36/50 |
How did prisoners manage to live under these conditions? Many prisoners managed to forge bonds with each other, giving one another
strength to survive. Halina Birenbaum, who survived Majdanek and wrote about her experience in Hope is the Last to Die
describes how her sister-in-law, Hela, helped her in Majdanek:
“Hela fought with redoubled strength—for herself and for me. She shared every bite she acquired with me…she showed me more affection and
attachment every day. She gave me all the love she felt for my brother, and did everything in her power to make my life in the camp easier. For
a long time I could not rouse myself from my state of listlessness. Had it not been for Hela’s efforts, I would not have roused myself from my apathy
and despair. But there was no room in Majdanek for the feeble and depressed.
Only here did I recognize the true nature of my sister-in-law, and only here did I come to love her. Later, I was ready to make any sacrifice for her.
Out of regard for her, and thanks to her help, I too finally joined the fight for life in the camp of death.”
Source: H. Birenbaum, Hope is the Last to Die. (Publishing House of the State Museum in Oswiecim, 1994) p. 101. |
Despite the grave danger involved, some prisoners tried to maintain their religious traditions in Majdanek. This form of cultural
resistance enabled them to maintain their dignity and heritage. The following testimony illustrates this:
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“It is difficult for me to describe the two Jews from Holland, who somehow got hold of a Bible. Every day, on their way to forced labor,
they used to read quietly out of it... More than once I tried to explain to them the dangers in what they were doing…These people
seemed happy to me. They know their days were numbered so they did not let the upheaval and the hunger uproot their human
feelings.” |
The Nazis began to liquidate Majdanek in earnest in April 1944, sending prisoners to Auschwitz-Birkenau,
Gross-Rosen, Bergen Belsen, Plaszow and other camps.
Over 12,000 prisoners—men, women, and children, including the gravely ill—were deported from Majdanek in ten transports,
travelling in freight cars under heavy SS guard.
As the Soviets approached, the Nazi camp staff destroyed documents and set fire to the buildings and the large crematorium
before abandoning the camp.
The remaining survivors were liberated at Majdanek by Soviet troops on July 22, 1944.
Victims of Majdanek
Over the course of the war, some 500,000 people from 28 different countries and of 54 different nationalities passed through Majdanek.
Of these, some 240,000 perished there, sixty percent dying as a result of the conditions in the camp—starvation, exhaustion, disease, and
brutality—and the rest executed in gas chambers or mass shootings carried out in and around the camp.
Most of those gassed to death were Jews taken to the gas chambers immediately upon arrival at Majdanek. On November 3, 1943, 18,000 Jewish
prisoners at Majdanek were executed by shooting.
This was the largest one-day execution in the history of Majdanek and all other Nazi concentration camps.
Some 60,000 victims of Majdanek were Jewish. In addition to the Jews deported from Poland (primarily from Lublin, Warsaw and Bialystok),
Germany, Czechoslovakia, The Netherlands, France, Hungary, Belgium and Greece, large numbers of people who were not Jewish were sent to
Majdanek. These included inmates from Soviet prisoner-of-war camps, Polish civilians arrested in German raids, Belorussians and Ukraininans, as well
as Polish farmers who had been expelled from their homes in the Zamosc region.
Photographs
Deportation of Lublin Jews to Majdanek
Deportation from Lublin to Majdanek, Poland
Identity cards of victims in the camp, Majdanek, Poland, July 1944
SS camp guards with Zyklon B canisters, Majdanek, Poland
A guard tower and barbed wire fences, Majdanek, Poland, 1973
Barracks after liberation, Majdanek, Poland, 1944
The crematorium, Majdanek, Poland
The crematorium chimney after liberation, Majdanek, Poland, 1944
Former inmates after liberation, Majdanek, Poland, 1944
The memorial site, Majdanek, Poland, 1944
Pages of Testimony
Pages of Testimony serve as symbolic gravestones, providing a unique memorial for victims of the Holocaust.
The following are five Pages of Testimony that were submitted to Yad Vashem, in memory of individuals who were murdered
during the Holocaust at Majdanek:
Page of Testimony for Shimen Rosenblum
Page of Testimony for Shaindl Korngut
Page of Testimony for Vera Goldmann
Page of Testimony for David Auslander
Page of Testimony for (unknown first name) Kogelman
You might want to print these Pages and take them with you on your journey to Poland. When you visit
Majdanek, you can read the names and stories that are recorded on these Pages of Testimony.
For more Pages of Testimony, search the
Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names.
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