Lublin-Majdanek Camp
John Barrett
Francis Garcia-Pages
Txikia Hernández-Morales
Jesus Miguelez
Lublin-Majdanek (also referred to as
Maidanek and Maydanek) was created in 1941, near the city of Lublin,
Poland, as a detention camp for Russian POW (Prisoners of War) from
another camp, located in Chelm. Equipped with a gas chamber
and a Krematorium (German for Crematory) to rid the bodies of the
camp victims in a sanitary method, Majdanek's "main purpose
was the elimination of every trace of actual or potential opposition
to Nazi rule" (Kogon 19). The Soviet POWs that contracted illness
(normally typhoid fever) became the first to experience the camp's
capability for mass extermination.
Before the organization of the
camp system, the Einsatzgruppen had first tackled the "final
solution" towards the Jewish problem. "The Einsatzgruppen
consisted of four units of between 500 and 900 men, each which followed
the invading German troops into the Soviet Union. By the time [Heinrich]
Himmler (head of the Gestapo and German police forces; chief of
the SS) ordered a halt to the shooting in the fall of 1942, they
had murdered approximately 1,500,000 Jews. The death camps proved
to be a better, faster, less personal method for killing Jews, one
that would spare the shooters, not the victims, emotional anguish.
The camp system was much more effective also, not only executing
all captured threats to the Nazi government efficiently, but also
raising revenues through prisoner labor exploitation and through
the plundering of prisoner possessions.
Between 1941 and 1942, Jews from
Lublin began to arrive at Majdanek also. After the German
SS (Schutzstaffel) troops conquered Poland in 1939, the Jewish element
throughout the country had been successfully separated for immediate
deportation. Majdanek took its name from the Jewish suburbs
of Majdan Tatarski that were located close by. The camp was
held and organized both by the militarized SS army authorities and
by the SS economic-Administrative Main Office (WVHA) which
was more politically bound to the Nazi party.
Also in 1942, non-Jewish deportations
began to arrive at Majdanek. The camp was "defined by a large
percentage of rural people.".
These people were deported for short amounts of time because of
several circumstances. Polish and Byelorussians were mostly
deported for not being able to meet agricultural quotas. Peasants
from the Bilgoraj area were deported in 1944 because of resistance
activities that had set back German forces in the area. These
types of prisoners were eparated from the Jews and from the POWs
as transit camp detainees. In 1943, overcrowded Polish prisoners
were also delivered to Majdanek .
The separation and classification
of inmates was common in Majdanek. Upon entering the camp,
Jewish prisoners were separated from the group and taken to the
Rose Field, an open area within the Majdanek camp, where they were
ordered to strip off their clothes and give up all possessions and
then underwent initial selection, where the camp's medical unit
expected each of their ability for labor. Any sick, very malnutritioned,
very old, or very young Jews where immediately separated and led
to the gas chamber where they were exterminated. These victims
were rarely even registered. The rest of the prisoners were
also separated from their families and sent to the barber and to
the bath house, where their hair was shaved off and they were
disinfected first with very hot water and then with Lysol solution.
They then proceeded to be registered and were given either stripped
uniforms, or light civilian clothing with painted markings.
They
were also given a pair of shoes or clogs, which normally did not
fit.
The barrack housing was in the
early years furnished merely with a dirt floor and straw.
When large amounts of prisoners began to arrive, flooring was installed,
as were plank beds with sod and straw packed mattresses. The
roofing did not provide proper protection from the extreme cold
weathers of the camp's outside environment. The military blankets
given, passed on from year to year and infected with lice, were
also too thin to protect from the cold. The clothing was not
only insufficient for the cold and rain, but also could not be changed.
Such horrid conditions in such a concentrated environment (barracks
were equipped for 250 people but were packed with much more) with
proper sanitation only once a month promoted epidemics throughout
the inmates. Proper sewage systems were not installed until
1943.
Malnutrition
and harsh labor also promoted "accelerated natural death"
. The common day for an inmate consisted of waking up for
role call at 5 or 6 AM. Like in a military institution, inmates
had very little time to clean the barracks and make their bunks.
Anybody who had died during the night had to be dragged out to role
call as well. A liquid breakfast was eaten and inmates split up
into labor teams called Kommandos. These teams were appointed
jobs either indoors or outdoors, which consisted of either construction
within the camp, maintenance of the camp, or outside organization
labor recruitment, under which the inmate worked at a company that
paid the SS for
his/her work. The SS camp administration made a lot of money
exploiting labor in this way by accepting food payments for inmates,
but only distributing half of these rations or less. Inmates
were given very little fat, and mostly liquid meals, less than a
thousand calories per day. If not directly exterminated, these
conditions provided a long path towards death for any inmate.
Direct executions, although most of the time executed through
the gas chamber, many times was done by shootings. The largest
execution carried out was in November of 1943, when a machine
gun was shot onto 18000 Jews. The execution took place all
day,
from role call to 5 PM, as the SS commander used the Jews to fill
a ditch that his men had dug up. SS guards changed post throughout
the mass execution, going off to lunch as new waves of Jews were
ordered to lay over the previously killed others.
The gas chamber at Majdanek was used
with two different gasses. "...Camp guards threw "Zyklon
B" pellets down an air shaft. Zyklon B was a highly poisonous
insecticide also used to kill rats and insects" (Bachrach 52).
Carbon Monoxide, which was released through canisters, was also
used. The guards were able to observe the killing through a small
sealed window on the side of the chamber. The gas chamber,
which was first used in 1942, was connected deceivingly to the bath
houses to lessen victim agitation. The bath houses, which
were used to disinfect inmates before such executions. Hot
water sprayed onto the victims made the gas more effective.
After execution, the bodies of the inmates were taken to the Krematorium
where any gold or silver teeth were first removed, and later the
carcass burnt to ashes. These gold teeth also provided a lot
of money to the SS camp administration along with the original plundering
of the inmates' possessions. "This mass plunder yielded mountains
of clothing. Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek together generated
nearly 300,000 pairs of shoes, which were distributed among German
settlers in Poland and among the inmates of other concentration
camps" (Bachrach 102).
Over
its four years of existence, 512 inmates were able to escape from
Majdanek. "The huge compound was surrounded by a double net
of barbed wire suspended from tall poles and electrified by high
voltage towers guarded by Germans with automatic weapons" (Gurdus
126) A Death Zone was marked at five meters from any fence.
At this distance, SS Guards were able to shoot without warning.
Another alternativet
aken by many of the weaker inmates, mostly by the Jews, was
suicide .
In July
1944, the Russian general Siemion Bogdanov initiated the fight for
the town along with Polish militias. On July 24, after evacuating
most troops, general Mosser surrendered the German garrison and
with it Majdanek. SS guards caught were convicted for the
mass killings in Majdanek. Out of the 300,000 prisoners that
were reported to have passed through the camp, 235,000 were killed.,
20,000 released, 45,000 transferred, and 1500 were liberated
).
Works Cited
Bachrach, Susan D. Bachrach.
Tell Them We Remember:
The Story of the Holocaust. Boston, MA: Little, Brown &
Company, 1994
Gurdus, Luba Krugman. The Death
Train. New York, NY:
Walden Press, 1978
Kogon, Eugene. The Theory and
Practice of Hell.
New York, NY: Berkley Publishing Corporation, 1980
Majdanek State Museum
http://www.lublin.pol.pl/majdanek/s.html
Works Consulted
Adler, David A. We Remember
the Holocaust. New York,
NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1989
Berenbaum, Michael. The
World Must Know: The
History of the Holocaust as Told in the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Canada:
Little, Brown and Company, 1993
History Place Holocaust Timeline:
Majdanek
Concentration Camp Liberated
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/
holocaust/h-majd-lib.htm
March of the Living
http://www.bonder.com/tour
