Tag: Majdanek Concentration Camp

Majdanek concentration camp is surprisingly central within Lublin, it’s within a built-up area of the city. So what went on here might not have been entirely public knowledge to the locals during the Second World War, but nor was it completely hidden.

The camp is relatively intact, which is primarily because the Soviets were able to march into Lublin before the Germans had been able to destroy evidence of what had happened here. There is still some controversy on exactly how much killing and torture went on here, but it looks fairly undeniable that there were war crimes and acts against humanity which took place.

The camp was first established in October 1941 on the orders of Heinrich Himmer and it was initially intended to house prisoners of war. Majdanek became used though as part Operation Reinhard, which was the extermination of Polish Jews. It was also used as a storage depot for property stolen from the Jews, with enormous volumes of material being collected.

There were five commandants of the camp between October 1941 and July 1944 when it was eventually liberated. None of the five survived long after the war, two were executed by the SS for theft, one committed suicide and two were executed following war crimes trials.

When I visited there was a group from Israel who were, if I’m being honest, acting disgracefully. The supervisors of the group were lax, although someone sensible within the party did manage to get control of the situation. Of all the locations for a school group to be out of control, this was not it. Anyway, they all left around an hour into my visit, and it remained very peaceful and quiet after that with few visitors at the site.

Interestingly, there were reports in the British media about this concentration camp as early as 1944. It was reported in the Nottingham Journal, amongst others, on 30 August 1944 (actually after the liberation, but no doubt the report from the correspondent had taken some time to arrive with the newspapers) that:

“It was a factory – a factory of death, its shops were gas chambers, the chimneys belonged to the crematorium where corpses were burned. Along the roads men, women and children were driven and beaten to death, while 200 dogs were trained to participate in mass murder by tearing the victims to pieces.

Even the barracks were used as an instrument of death, because the Germans mixed healthy people with those suffering from infectious diseases. There were even profits. The Germans sold the urns with the ashes from the crematorium to the relatives of the murdered people, saying it was their ashes and exacted 500 to 3,000 zlotys.”

The correspondence who wrote this report also said that prisoners were searched on arrival and he was able to see the large warehouses filled with the possessions which had been stolen from them.

I did see a video of the site on Youtube about the liberation, which I think is this one being advertised on Amazon.

I’ve posted separately about numerous other aspects of the site, and these posts include:

Photos

Dome of Ashes

Sarcophagus

Dissection Table

External Photos

Zyklon B

Bathing

Barracks

Memorial

Execution Ditches

Column of Three Eagles

Shoes

 

Some other photos from Majdanek that I didn’t include in the other posts…

 

Designed at the same time as the Majdanek Memorial, this dome stands on top of 17 tonnes of ashes and human remains. Wiktor Tołkin, the designer, put on the side of the structure the message “let our fate be a warning to you all”.

Pieces of bone are visible in the huge pile of ashes, which were relocated here from another part of the site. The soil is treated with a substance, which isn’t visible, which protects it and stops it from blowing away.

Carl Michael Hausswolf, an artist, was condemned internationally a few years ago when he said that he had stolen ashes from the site in 1979 and incorporated them into a painting. The painting was immediately withdrawn from the gallery where it was being displayed and it isn’t entirely clear whether or not the artist’s claim are genuine. One would like to think that the claims are untrue…..

This is the sarcophagus where the remains of bodies burned in the crematorium were stored in July 1944.

The concrete dissection table at Majdanek, said to have been used when trying to remove items of value from a body, primarily gold teeth, but also to find valuables which had been hidden.

Some photos of the external areas at Majdanek concentration camp.

   

What is undeniable is that these Prussian blue stains have been caused by the use of Zyklon B. This is now known to be what was used to kill hundreds of thousands of people in gas chambers at locations such as Auschwitz Birkenau, but it was originally used as a cyanide based substance used to delouse clothes.

And this area of the camp are barracks 41, with signage indicating that this is where prisoners were gassed. However, there is some considerable argument about whether this can possibly be true, and on the camp’s own web-site there’s a document saying:

“It is certain, however, that gas chambers were not used for extermination after the executions of 3 November 1943 and that the chamber adjoining the shower room in barracks No. 41 and the chamber in the west part of the bunker were used for the disinfection of blankets and clothes, including those belonging to murdered Jews. These were disinfected using Zyklon B. First, the chamber was warmed up with heated air and, after disinfection was complete; the gas was removed through openings in the roof with the use of a ventilation fan.”

So although it’s clear that significant numbers of people were killed at Majdanek, I’m not sure that this area is where they actually were murdered. The blue stains do appear to be from when the room was used to delouse blankets and clothing, although it is possible that killings took place earlier on.

I have to admit to be entirely confused by much of the signage at Majdanek, I ended up with far more questions than answers.

Later on during the war the whole concept of showers in concentration camps took a sinister turn as it was where prisoners were killed using poisonous gas. Here at Majdanek though these showers were intended to clean and disinfect prisoners, usually new arrivals.

The shower heads and there are numerous reports that these dispensed water that was either freezing cold or boiling hot.

The large sinks, which were also used to bathe prisoners to disinfect them.

The prisoners would walk along the wooden slated floor before being herded out of the room. It seems that later on during the war the prisoners were given the opportunity to take more showers to try and get rid of the problem of lice, although since the living accommodation was riven with them it seems a slightly forlorn exercise.

A photo from one of the barrack buildings at Majdanek. Initially the prisoners at the camp needed to sleep on straw filled mattresses on the floor, but from early 1942 this bunk bed arrangements was introduced. Each of the barracks were designed to house 250 people, and even that is at quite a push, but they were soon housing over 500 people.

The initial intention of the camp was to hold Soviet prisoners of war and also civilian prisoners, so the standard of accommodation was meant to be at least bearable. There were 108 barracks erected in total across the site, with the conditions being ever more intolerable as the war progressed and the purpose of the site changed.

Majdanek’s memorial is an imposing structure built at the entrance to the camp and it was erected in 1969 to mark 25 years since it was liberated. The memorial was designed by Wiktor Tołkin, a Polish sculptor who had been incarcerated at Auschwitz Birkenau and had managed to survive a death march.

The memorial is, I understand, meant to represent the enormity of what happened here. It is intended to be both bleak and to also represent hope for the future.