Majdanek, or KL Lublin, was a German concentration and camp built and run by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland during World War II. Although originally intended for forced labor rather than extermination, the camp was used to kill people on an industrial scale during Operation Reinhard, the German plan to exterminate all Jews in their own Common Government Territory of Poland. The camp, which operated from October 1, 1941 to July 22, 1944, was captured almost intact, because the rapid advance of the Soviet Red Army during Bagration's operations prevented destroy much of their infrastructure, and the inept deputy camp commandant Anton Turns failed in his task of removing damning evidence of war crimes. Therefore, Majdanek became the first concentration camp discovered by the Allied forces. Also Known SS, as Konzentrationslager (KL) Lublin, Majdanek remains the best preserved Nazi Holocaust concentration camp.
Unlike other similar camps in Nazi-occupied Poland, Majdanek was not in a remote countryside away from populated areas, but within the boundaries of a major city (see also: Nisko plan predating the formation of the ghetto). The proximity led the camp to be called Majdanek ("little Maidan") by the local population in 1941, because it was next to the suburb of Majdan Tatar in Lublin. Nazi documents originally named the site a Waffen-SS prisoner of war camp in Lublin due to the way it was operated and funded. It was renamed by the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin as Konzentrationslager Lublin April 9, 1943, but the local Polish name is generally still in use.
construction
Konzentrationslager Lublin was created in October 1941 by order Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler forwarded to Globocnik shortly after his visit to Lublin on 17–20 July 1941 during the initially successful German attack on Soviet positions in eastern Poland. The original plan drawn up by Himmler was for the camp to hold at least 25,000 prisoners.
After a large number of Soviet POWs captured during the Battle of Kyiv, the design capacity was subsequently set to 50,000 and construction for this many began on 1 October 1941 (as was also the case at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which received the same order). In early November, plans were expanded to allow 125,000 prisoners, and in December to 150,000. It was enlarged in March 1942 to allow for 250,000 Soviet prisoners of war.
Construction began with 150 Jewish forced laborers from one of the Lublin camps, Globocnik, to whom the prisoners were returned every night. Later, the staff included 2,000 Red Army prisoners of war, who had to survive in extreme conditions, including sleeping in the open. By mid-November, only 500 of them were still alive, of which at least 30% were incapable of further labor. In mid-December, 20,000 barracks were ready when a typhus epidemic broke out, and by January 1942 all the forced laborers - prisoners of war as well as Polish Jews - were dead. All work did not stop until March 1942, when new prisoners arrived. Although the camp would eventually be able to hold around 50,000 prisoners, it did not materially go beyond that size.
In operation
Aerial reconnaissance photograph of the Majdanek concentration camp (June 24, 1944) from the collection of the Majdanek Museum; Lower half: barracks under deconstruction with visible chimneys still standing and planks of timber piled along the supply road; in the upper half, functioning barracks
In July 1942 Himmler visited Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka; three secret extermination camps built specifically for Nazi Germany by Operation Reinhard are intended to eliminate Polish Jewry. These camps began operations in March, May and July 1942, respectively, as soon as the "Final Solution" was decided. Subsequently, Himmler issued an order for the deportation of Jews to camps from the five districts of occupied Poland that constituted the Nazi General- will be completed by the end of 1942.
Majdanek was made into a secondary sorting and storage depot at the beginning of Operation Reinhard, for property and valuables taken from the victims at the killing centers in Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. However, due to the large Jewish population in southeastern Poland, including Kraków, Lwów, Zamość and Warsaw, which had not yet been "treated", Majdanek was renovated as a sedative center around March 1942. Gassing was carried out at the mere submission of other prisoners, without as much as a fence around buildings. Another popular method of killing was the Trawnikis. According to the Majdanek Museum, the gas chambers began operation in September 1942. There are two identical buildings in Majdanek, where Zyklon-B was used. Executions were carried out in barrack 41 using crystalline hydrogen cyanide released by Zyklon B. The same poison gas pellet was used to disinfect the inmates' clothes in barrack 42.
Due to the urgent need for foreign labor in the war industry, Jewish workers from Poland were initially spared, and were (for a while) either kept in 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 mainly at the Steyr-Daimler-Puch arms/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. In August 1943, there were 16,206 prisoners in the main camp, of whom 9,105 (56.18%) were Jews and 3,893 (24.02%) were non-Jewish Poles. Minority contingents included Belarusians, Ukrainians, Russians, Germans, Austrians, Slovenes, Italians, and French and Dutch citizens. According to the official Majdanek State Museum, 300,000 people were prisoners of the camp at one time or another. The prisoner population at any given time was significantly lower.
From October 1942, Majdanek also had female guards. These SS men, who were trained at the Ravensbrück concentration camp, included convicted war criminals Elsa Ehrich, Hermine Boetscher-Brückner, Braunsteiner, Hildegard Lascher, Rosy Suess (Süss) Elisabeth Knoblich-Ernst, Charlotte Karl Mayer-Woellert, and Gertrud Hayes (1942–1944 ).
Majdanek initially had no subcamps. They were incorporated in the early autumn of 1943, when the rest of the forced labor camps near Lublin including Budzyń, Trawniki, Poniatowa, Krasnik, Pulawy, as well as the "airstrip", and Lipowa concentration camps became Majdanek sub-camps.
From September 1, 1941 to May 28, 1942 Alphonse Bentele headed the administration in the camp. Alois Kurz, SS Untersturmführer, was a German officer at Majdanek, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and at Mittelbau-Dora. It wasn't loaded. On 18 June 1943, Fritz Ritterbusch moved to KL Lublin to become adjutant to the commandant.
Due to the proximity of the Lublin camp, the prisoners were able to communicate with the outside world through letters smuggled in from the civilian workers who entered the camp. Many of these surviving letters were given to their recipients in the camp museum. In 2008 the museum held a special exhibition, a selection of these letters.
From February 1943, the Germans allowed the Polish Red Cross and the Central Welfare Council to bring in food to the camp. Prisoners can receive food packages addressed to them by name with the help of the Polish Red Cross. Majdanek Museum archives documents 10,300 such detailed deliveries.
Aktion Erntefest
Operation Reinhard continued until early November 1943, when the last Jewish prisoners of the Majdanek system from subcamps from the Lublin area in the General Government were killed by gunfire from squads of Travnik men during Operation Harvest Festival. As for the Majdanek main camp, the most notorious executions took place on November 3, 1943, when 18,400 Jews were killed in one day. The next morning, 25 Jews who managed to escape were found and shot. At the same time, 611 other prisoners, 311 women and 300 men, were ordered to sort out the clothes of the dead and cover the burial trenches. The men were later appointed Sonderkommando 1005 where they were to dig up the same body for cremation. These people were later executed themselves. 311 women were subsequently sent to Auschwitz, where they were gassed. By the end of Operation "Harvest Festival" Majdanek had only 71 Jews left out of a total of 6,562 prisoners still alive.
Executions of other prisoners continued at Majdanek in the following months. Between December 1943 and March 1944, Majdanek received about 18,000 so-called "invalids," many of whom, where subsequently gassed 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.
The trial of adjutant Karl Höcker shows his guilt in the massacres committed in this camp. On May 3, 1989, the district court in the German city of Bielefeld sentenced Höcker to four years in prison for his involvement in the gassing of death inmates, primarily Polish Jews, at the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland. Kemp's record showed that between May 1943 and May 1944 Höcker purchased at least 3,610 kg (7,960 lb) of Zyklon B poisonous gases for use in Majdanek from the Hamburg firm Tesch & Stabenow." Also, commandant Rudolf Hess of Auschwitz wrote in his memoirs, written while awaiting trial in Poland, that one method of killing used in Majdanek (KZ Lublin) was Zyklon-B.
emptying
At the end of July 1944, when the Soviet troops were rapidly approaching Lublin, the Germans hastily evacuated the camp. However, the officers were only able to partially destroy the crematoriums before the Soviet Red Army troops arrived on 24 July 1944, then Majdanek the best preserved Holocaust camp. It was the first major concentration camp liberated by the Allied forces, and the horrors found there were widely published.
Although 1,000 prisoners had previously been forcibly marched into Auschwitz (of which only half arrived alive), the Red Army still found thousands of prisoners, mostly POWs, still in the camp and ample evidence of the massacre that had taken place there.
number of victims
An official estimate of 78,000 victims, out of those 59,000 Jews, was determined in 2005 by Tomasz Kranz, director of the research department of the Majdanek State Museum, calculated after the discovery of the Höfle Telegram in 2000. This number is close to the one currently listed on the museum's website. The total number of victims has been a controversial research topic since the study of Judge Zdzisław Łukaszkiewicz in 1948, which approximated the figure as 360,000 victims. It was followed by an estimate of about 235,000 victims by Czesław Rajca (1992) from the Majdanek Museum, which has been mentioned in the museum for many years. The rate is currently considered "incredibly low" by Rajca, however, it has been accepted by the Museum Board of Directors "with some caution", pending further research into the number of prisoners who were not put into the German camp administration's Holocaust train records. Currently, the Museum reports that based on new research, about 150,000 prisoners arrived in Majdanek during its 34 months of existence. Of the more than 2,000,000 Jews killed during Operation Reinhard, some 60,000 Jews (56,000 known by name) were certainly massacred at Majdanek, among its nearly 80,000 victims, in total.
Watchtowers along the barbed wire, double fence along the perimeter of the Majdanek camp
The Soviets initially grossly inflated the number of deaths, claiming that at the Nuremberg Trials in July 1944 that there were no fewer than 400,000 Jewish victims, and the official Soviet count was at 1.5 million victims of various nationalities, independent Canadian journalist Raymond Arthur Davies, who was based in Moscow and the allowance of the Canadian Jewish Congress visited Majdanek on August 28, 1944. The next day he sent a telegram to Saul Hayes, the executive director of the Canadian Jewish Congress. She says: "I want [to] emphasize that Majdanek, where one million Jews and half a million others [were] killed" and "You can tell America that at least three million [Polish] Jews [were] killed, of which at least a third were killed in Majdanek", and although widely publicized in this case, the assessment has never been taken seriously by scholars.
In 1961, Raul Hilberg estimated the number of Jewish victims at 50,000. In 1992, Czesław Rajca gave his estimate at 235,000; it was exhibited in the camp museum. A 2005 study by the head of the scientific department at the Majdanek Museum, historian Tomasz Krantz indicated that there were 79,000 victims, 59,000 of whom were Jews.
The differences in estimates stem from the different methods used to evaluate and the amount of evidence available to investigators. The Soviet figures relied on the crudest technique also used to make the Auschwitz estimate, it was assumed that the number of victims more or less matched the capacity of the crematoria. Later researchers tried to take much more evidence into account, using records of deportations, concurrent censuses, and diverted Nazi records. Hilberg's 1961 estimate, using these records, aligns closely with Krantz's report.
The well-preserved original ovens in the second Majdanek crematorium were built in 1943 by Heinrich Kari. They replaced stoves brought to Majdanek from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1942.
| Majdanek commandants | ||
| title | Rank | Maintenance and notes |
|---|---|---|
| Carl-Otto Koch | SS-Standartenführer | Camp commandant from October 1941 to August 1942 SS April 5, 1945 for robbing the Reich of Jewish gold and money. |
| Max Koegel | SS-Sturmbannführer | The camp commandant from August 1942 to November 1942 committed suicide in Allied custody in Germany on the day after his arrest on June 27, 1946. |
| florstedt | SS Obersturmführer | Camp commandant from November 1942 to October 1943 Tried and performed SS April 15, 1945 for stealing from the Reich in order to become rich, just like Koch. |
| Martin Gottfried Weiss | SS-Obersturmbannführer | Camp commandant from November 1, 1943 to May 5, 1944 Tried during the Dachau trials in November 1945, hanged on May 29, 1946. |
| Liebehenschel | SS-Obersturmbannführer | Camp commandant from May 5, 1944 to July 22, 1944. Tried at the Auschwitz trial in Krakow, sentenced to death and hanged on January 28, 1948. |
|
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aftermath
After the capture camp, in August 1944 the Soviet Union defended the territory of the camp and convened a special Polish-Soviet commission to investigate and document the crimes against humanity committed in Majdanek. This work represents one of the first attempts to document Nazi crimes in Eastern Europe. In the autumn of 1944, the Majdanek State Museum was founded on the territory of the Majdanek concentration camp. In 1947 the actual camp became a martyrological monument by decree of the Polish parliament. In the same year, about 1300 m³ of soil surface mixed with human ashes and bone fragments were collected and turned into a large hill. Majdanek received the status of a national museum in 1965.
Some Nazi camp staff were recruited immediately after the war, and some for decades afterward. In November and December 1944, four SS men and two kapos were placed on ships; one committed suicide and the rest were hanged on 3 December 1944. The last major, widely publicized accusations of 16 SS members Majdanek (
« » No. 221, September 16, 1944TODAY IN THE ISSUE: From the Soviet Information Bureau. - Operational summary for September 15 (1 page). Guard Major I. Anufriev. - North of Prague (1 page). Major P. Troyanovsky. - In liberated Prague (2 pages). Lieutenant Colonel V. Koroteev, Captain S. Semenov. - South of the city of Sanok (2 lines). Communiqué of the Polish-Soviet Extraordinary Commission for the Investigation of the Atrocities of the Germans Committed in the Extermination Camp on Majdanek in the City of Lublin (2-3 pp.). Three times Hero of the Soviet Union Guard Colonel A.I. Pokryshkin. - Wings of a fighter. 3. Air combat formula (4 pages). Military operations in Western Europe (4 pp.). Conference at Dumbarton Oaks (4 pp.). The situation in Bulgaria (4 pages). German attempt to capture the island of Suursaari (4 pp.).
Today, a communiqué of the Polish-Soviet Extraordinary Commission for the Investigation of the Atrocities of the Germans Committed in the Majdanek Extermination Camp in the City of Lublin has been published. You can't just read this document. Monstrous facts mercilessly expose the German monsters. They irrefutably testify that the Germans committed horrendous crimes on Majdanek, the likes of which the whole history did not know.
On Maidanek, the Nazi executioners created a huge death plant. It covered an area of 270 hectares. It had hundreds of different buildings. It was equipped with a variety of instruments of murder - from gallows to special gas chambers. Day and night, the chimneys of a powerful crematorium for 5 incinerators smoked here, incinerating more than 1900 corpses daily. And day and night, on foot, in cars, in trains, tens of thousands of people were driven here in order to exterminate them thoughtfully, in cold blood.
It is known that long before the seizure of power, Hitler said to his henchmen: "We will develop the technique of depopulation ... I mean the elimination of entire races ...". Majdanek is one of the most complete incarnations of this savage, bloody plan of the ogre-Hitler. Majdanek is a monstrous factory of death, which has become a place of mass destruction of various peoples of Europe.
The communique of the Polish-Soviet Extraordinary Commission, on the basis of documentary data and testimonies, restores in every detail the terrible picture of the brutal reprisals against hundreds of thousands of innocent people who passed through the camp on Majdanek. Here the entire regime was subordinated to one goal - extermination. The prisoners eked out a hungry existence. They were tortured with overwork. Given under the undivided power of the sadistic Nazis, they were subjected to such torments, in comparison with which death itself seemed a blessing. The arsenal of torture used by the Germans on Majdanek was unusually varied. The Germans did not just kill their victims - they.
The materials of the investigation of the atrocities of the Germans committed at Majdanek are full of facts of unheard-of cruelty. This is where living people were thrown into the crematorium ovens. This is where babies were torn to pieces. And it was here that German doctors systematically selected people for strangulation. The Nazis inhumanly mocked even the ashes of their victims: “on the territory of the“ extermination camp ”. The commission found over 1,350 cubic meters of compost, consisting of manure, ashes from burned corpses and small human bones.”
Majdanek means mass executions. In just one day - November 3, 1943 - 18,400 people were shot here. Majdanek is a mass extermination by suffocating gases. With the simultaneous use of all the chambers specially equipped for poisoning, more than 1,900 people were killed here at one time. “Numerous testimonies of eyewitnesses, data of forensic, technical and chemical examinations established that the Nazi executioners systematically for almost three years carried out mass asphyxiation with gases of hundreds of thousands of innocent cruel people, including the elderly, women and children, in the camp on Majdanek. ".
Shortly speaking, Majdanek is the complete personification of the entire Hitler regime, the entire Nazi Germany. The Germans called the camp on Majdanek "Fernichtungslager". But what is fascist Germany itself, if not the same gigantic "Fernichtungslager", i.e. extermination camp! “The mass extermination of the civilian population of the countries of Europe, Poland and the occupied regions of the USSR constituted the policy of Nazi Germany, which followed from the plans to enslave and destroy the advanced and active part of the Slavic peoples,” the communiqué of the Polish-Soviet Extraordinary Commission rightly states. What happened on Majdanek repeats in all its details only what happened everywhere where the Nazis ruled. On Majdanek, the Germans made a system of robbing prisoners and tortured men. Bloodied children's dresses, the glasses of the executed, the suits of the strangled - all this was carefully sorted out, and constituted a certain source of income for Nazi robbers of various ranks. The same robbery, only on an immeasurably large scale, was carried out by the Germans everywhere and always in all the occupied countries. Murder and robbery - such is the foundation of the Hitler regime. Rabid executioners, alien to any human feelings, fallen to the limit in their moral savagery - such are the Nazis.
The truth about Majdanek, sounded with all force from the pages of the communique of the Polish-Soviet Extraordinary Commission, once again reminds the whole world that there is no and cannot be any leniency towards such an enemy as the Germans. Everyone in whom a warm human heart beats, everyone who is not devoid of conscience and reason, clearly realizes: until the criminal fascist system that gave birth to Maidanek is completely destroyed, until the world is completely cleansed of the executioners and murderers who ruled in many Maidanek created by the Nazis - humanity cannot breathe freely.
The Polish-Soviet Extraordinary Commission established that during the four-year existence of the Majdanek extermination camp, the Nazi executioners, on the direct orders of their criminal government, exterminated by mass executions, mass murder in gas chambers about one and a half million people- Soviet prisoners of war, prisoners of war of the former Polish army, citizens of various nationalities: Poles, French, Italians, Belgians, Dutch, Czechs, Serbs, Greeks, Croats and a large mass of Jews. The blood of these innocent victims of the Nazi executioners burns our hearts. The memory of them increases our strength tenfold, calls us to move forward even faster, to beat the vile and hated enemy even more decisively and harder.
Remember Maidanek, soldier of the Red Army, remember that the Germans were going to turn our entire country into one colossal Maidanek! Who does not know that already in the summer of 1941, the German command created special "Sonderkommandos" from the "revealed murderers" to deal with the inhabitants of Moscow. But the Germans did not see Moscow. Hitler's plans of conquest were thwarted by the Red Army. Our valiant troops inflicted decisive defeats on the enemy. Flame war is already raging at the very lair of the fascist beast. But our account of revenge on the German fascist bastards is far from being paid. Retribution is only coming. Let us exert all efforts to quickly, in full measure to exact from the German monsters for all their immeasurable crimes, for every drop the blood of innocent people shed by them, for every tear, every groan!
Maidanek, hundreds of other large and small Maidaneks, created by the Nazis in the occupied Soviet territory and in other countries, must be avenged and will be avenged completely.
______________________________________
Boris Gorbatov: (Pravda, USSR)
* ("Red Star", USSR)**
EXTERMINATION CAMP ON MAYDANEK. At the crematorium ovens
**************************************** **************************************** ****************************
From the Soviet Information Bureau
*
During September 15, north of PRAGUE, our troops, together with units of the 1st Polish Army, advanced with stubborn battles and captured the settlements of RYNYA, BYALOBRZHEGI, ALEKSANDRUV, IZABELIN, STANISLAVOV, CHARNA STROUGA, MARK, GRODZISK, BYALOLENKA, ANNOPOL, TARGUVEK.
South of the city of SANOK, our troops captured the city of LISKO and the settlements of PLONNA, BZHOZOVEC, LUKOVE, DZYURDZYUV, GOCHEV, UHERTSE, RUDENKA, BEZMIKHOVA and the Ugertse railway station.
In Northern Transylvania, our troops, acting jointly with the Romanian troops, captured the city and railway station TOPLITSA, and also occupied more than 40 other settlements with battles, including the large settlements of SOVATA, SHICLOD, KIBEDE, MADIAROSH, MAKFALVA, VADAS, HAVADTE, BORDOSHIU and railway stations SOVATA, KIBEDD, CHOK, ERDE-SENT-GYERDY.
In other sectors of the front, scouts were searched for, and local battles were fought in a number of points.
On September 14, our troops knocked out and destroyed 110 German tanks on all fronts. In air battles and anti-aircraft artillery fire, 72 enemy aircraft were shot down.
Massive raid of our aviation on Budapest
On the night of September 15, our long-range aviation again made a massive raid on the capital of Hungary, the city of Budapest. As a result of the bombardment of the military-industrial facilities of Budapest, more than 35 fires broke out, including up to 20 fires of very large sizes. Observation noted that bombs hit the bridge over the Danube River. At the Western Station, on the territory of the main railway workshops, the machine-building plant and other enterprises of the city, strong explosions took place amidst the fire. Our pilots observed the flame of fires, moving away from the target, from a distance of 250 kilometers.
Enthusiastic welcome of the Red Army by the population of liberated Prague
The population of Prague (a suburb of Warsaw) gave an enthusiastic welcome to the Soviet troops who liberated Prague from the German invaders. During the street fighting in Prague, the population selflessly helped our fighters. Polish girls and women under artillery fire, risking their lives, carried the wounded Soviet soldiers from the battlefield and provided them with first aid. After the liberation of Prague from the German invaders, the inhabitants invite Soviet soldiers and commanders to visit them. The population strives in word and deed to express its gratitude to the Red Army. The inhabitants of Prague vying with each other tell what tortures and torments they had to endure, what wild atrocities were committed by the German monsters. Under the threat of execution, the Nazis drove the population of Prague to hard labor. However, many Poles managed to escape from their pursuers and wait for the arrival of the Red Army. Funerals were held for soldiers who died a heroic death. Thousands of local residents attended the funeral. The Poles decorated the graves of the heroes who fell in the battles for the liberation of Prague with flowers. The command of the Red Army is helping the population with food, since under the Germans the inhabitants of Prague went hungry for many months.
It should be noted that, despite the noise raised by General Boer about his "underground" army in the Prague region, in fact, not a single soldier of the so-called "underground" army was found in Prague.
North of Prague, our troops fought forward. The Germans, fortified on the heights, in the villages and behind the railway embankments, offered stubborn resistance. Our troops, together with units of the 1st Polish Army, are knocking out the Nazis from fortifications and shelters. As a result of a fierce battle, the enemy was knocked out of the powerful defense center of Annopol. A number of other settlements are also busy.
Our pilots attacked firing positions and concentrations of enemy troops. 13 German planes were shot down in air battles and anti-aircraft artillery fire.
During the four days of fighting for Prague, Soviet troops and units of the 1st Polish Army exterminated up to 8,000 German soldiers and officers. 70 tanks and self-propelled guns, 54 field guns and 380 machine guns were destroyed. Trophies were captured, including 8 serviceable tanks, 14 armored personnel carriers and 52 guns. Up to 400 German soldiers and officers were taken prisoner.
South of the city of Sanok, our troops fought offensive battles. In the area of \u200b\u200bthe settlement of Lukove, the Germans rushed to the counterattack six times. Having exhausted the enemy, the Soviet fighters threw the enemy back with a counterattack. Over 200 enemy corpses remained on the battlefield. As a result of fierce battles, units of the N-th formation crossed the San River and captured the city of Lisko. The enemy suffered heavy losses in men and equipment.
Six attack planes under the command of Lieutenant Andrianov's Guards, escorted by two fighters, stormed the concentration of tanks and artillery positions of the Germans. At this time, 8 enemy fighters appeared. A fierce air battle ensued, during which Soviet pilots shot down 5 German aircraft without losing a single one of their aircraft.
In Northern Transylvania, our troops continued their successful offensive. Parts of the N-th connection, acting together with the Romanian troops, cleared a number of settlements from the enemy. The Germans and Hungarians were driven out of the city of Toplice, an important highway junction. Pursuing the retreating enemy, the Soviet cavalry squadron surrounded and defeated a group of Germans. In another sector, our troops, as a result of a swift maneuver, inflicted heavy losses on the Nazis. 1,200 German and Hungarian soldiers and officers were taken prisoner.
Aviation of the Northern Fleet sank an enemy tanker and patrol boat in the Barents Sea. In addition, our boats torpedoed and sunk two German transports.
The pilots of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet attacked an enemy transport with a displacement of 7 thousand tons in the Gulf of Finland, which was guarded by a patrol ship and three minesweepers. The German transport was sunk by a direct hit of the bombs. //
From Warsaw to the museum on the site of the death camp (outskirts of Lublin) - 2.5 hours by car. Admission is free, but there are few who want to look. Only in the building of the crematorium, where 5 furnaces turned prisoners into ashes every day, a school excursion crowds along with a Catholic priest. Preparing to serve a mass in memory of the Poles martyred in Majdanek, the priest lays a tablecloth on the prepared table, takes out a Bible and candles. Teenagers are clearly not interested here - they joke, smile, go out for a smoke. "Do you know who liberated this camp?" I ask. There is confusion among young Poles. "Englishmen?" - the blonde girl says uncertainly. "No, Americans! - the skinny guy interrupts her. - It seems that there was a landing! “Russians,” the priest says quietly. Schoolchildren are amazed: the news for them is like a bolt from the blue. On July 22, 1944, the Red Army was greeted in Lublin with flowers and tears of joy. Now we cannot wait for the liberation of the concentration camps not even gratitude - just elementary respect.
Residents of Lublin and soldiers of the Soviet Army on one of the streets of the city. July 24, 1944. Photo: RIA Novosti / Alexander Kapustyansky
Counting the dead
Almost everything has been preserved in Majdanek. Double barbed-wire fences, SS watchtowers, and blackened crematorium ovens. On the barracks with a gas chamber, a sign is screwed - “Washing and disinfection”. They brought 50 people here, allegedly to a bathhouse - they gave out soap, asked them to neatly fold their clothes. The victims entered the cement shower room, the door was blocked, and gas was streaming from the holes in the ceiling. It strikes a peephole in the door - some scum from the SS calmly watched people die in agony. Rare visitors speak quietly, like in a cemetery. An Israeli girl cries on her boyfriend's shoulder. A museum employee reports that 80,000 people died in the camp. "Like this? I wonder. “After all, the figure of 300,000 appeared at the Nuremberg trials, a third of them were Poles.” It turns out that after 1991 the number of victims was constantly reduced - at first it was decided that 200,000 people were tortured in Majdanek, and recently they completely “knocked off” to 80,000: they say, more precisely, they counted.
Almost everything has been preserved in Majdanek. Double barbed-wire fences, SS watchtowers, and blackened crematorium ovens. Photo: AiF / Georgy Zotov
I won’t be surprised if, in ten years, the Polish authorities begin to assert: no one died in Majdanek at all, the concentration camp was an exemplary sanatorium-resort where prisoners underwent wellness procedures, - he is indignant editor-in-chief of the Internet portal Strajk Maciej Wisniewski.- My father, who was a partisan during the war, said: “Yes, the Russians brought us a regime that we did not want. But the main thing is that the gas chambers and stoves stopped working in the SS concentration camps.” In Poland, state propaganda at all levels is trying to hush up the merits of Soviet soldiers in saving tens of millions of lives. After all, if it were not for the Red Army, the Majdanek crematorium would continue to smoke every day.
The Germans, who carried out the sentence on innocent people in the Majdanek death camp, are holding Cyclone gas cylinders in their hands. Both were hanged by a court verdict in Lublin in 1944. Photo: RIA Novosti / Viktor Temin
City of death
It's only a minute to walk from the gas chamber - you find yourself in a barrack, stuffed to the brim with old, half-decayed shoes. I look at it for a long time. Expensive shoes of fashionistas (one of snakeskin), men's boots, children's shoes. There were more of them, but in 2010 one barrack of the museum burned down for unknown reasons (possibly from arson): 7,000 pairs of shoes were lost in the fire. On November 3, 1943, as part of the so-called “Operation Erntefest” (harvest festival), SS men shot 18,400 Jews in Majdanek, including many citizens of the USSR. People were forced to lie down in the ditches on top of each other, “in a layer”, and then they were shot in the back of the head.
The victims entered the cement shower room, the door was blocked, and gas was streaming from the holes in the ceiling. It strikes a peephole in the door - some scum from the SS calmly watched people die in agony. Photo: AiF / Georgy Zotov
611 people then sorted the property of the executed for a week, including these very shoes. The sorters were also destroyed - the men were shot, the women were sent to the gas chamber. In the room next to it is a memorial to nameless prisoners whose identities could not be established: rows of light bulbs are lit, shrouded in balls of barbed wire. An audio recording is played - in Polish, Russian, Yiddish people ask God to save their lives. The current museum occupies only a fourth of the real territory of Majdanek: founded on October 1, 1941, it was a concentration camp-city with “districts” where women, Jews, and Polish rebels were kept separately. The first inhabitants of the "SS special zone" were 2000 Soviet prisoners of war, in just 1.5 (!) Years, three-quarters of them died from unbearable conditions of detention. But the ex-position of the museum does not focus on this fact.
The gas chambers of the concentration camp where prisoners were exterminated. Photo: RIA Novosti / Yakov Ryumkin
By January 1942, the rest of the prisoners were dead - the camp was empty until March, until 50,000 new prisoners were brought in. They were destroyed so quickly that one crematorium could not cope - a second one had to be built. Now in Poland, as I pointed out above, they say: "Soviet propaganda" overestimated the number of deaths in Majdanek - only 80,000 victims have been confirmed. Of course, who is interested in the fact that many of those burned in the ovens did not have passports at all. They were brought here just to be killed.
Burned alive
Unfortunately, this is the style of modern Polish policy towards Russia, - commented on the situation Correspondent of the Bulgarian National Radio in Warsaw Boyan Stanislavsky. - Everything good that the Soviet soldiers did when they liberated Poland from the Nazi occupation is called bad, or they try not to mention it at all. Here they are passionate about dismantling monuments to your soldiers and renaming the streets named after the dead communist underground workers.
Soviet documentary filmmaker Roman Karmen filming in the Nazi camp Majdanek. Photo: RIA Novosti
The towers above the camp darkened with time, the tree turned jet black. 73 years ago, two SS guards stood on each, watching Majdanek - often, in despair, the prisoners themselves went under the bullets, just to end their torment. The ashes of thousands of prisoners were buried in a huge mausoleum built next to the crematorium - the Red Army soldiers who liberated Majdanek found boxes with ashes, which the guards had prepared for disposal. The furnaces of the crematorium are smoked with fire, it is impossible to clean them from the remains of hundreds of thousands of people soaked into the metal.
The towers above the camp darkened with time, the tree turned jet black. 73 years ago, two SS guards stood on each, watching Majdanek. Photo: AiF / Georgy Zotov
One of the prisoners who ended up in Majdanek at the age of six (!) A native of the Vitebsk region Alexander Petrov, said: Jewish children of preschool age were burned alive in these furnaces. Survivors in the camp testify that the Germans did not show much hatred towards them. They tried to kill as many people as possible, routinely doing their job.
Of all the trees in the camp, one survived. On the rest, the prisoners dying of terrible hunger ate the bark, gnawed the roots ...
On April 21, the Polish Senate passed a resolution allowing the remaining monuments to fallen Soviet soldiers to be demolished as "glorifying communism." During the 6 years of occupation, the Nazis killed 6 million Poles. Their descendants say now: the number of victims was exaggerated by "Soviet propaganda".
And that's all you need to know about the policy of the current Polish authorities, who at the official level insult the memory of the soldiers who, at the cost of their lives, stopped the furnaces of the Majdanek concentration camp ...
Photos of people burned in the Majdanek concentration camp in 1944. Photo: RIA Novosti / Viktor Temin
Next, we suggest going on a virtual tour of a terrible place - the German death camp Majdanek, which was built in Poland during the Second World War. The camp currently houses a museum.
From Warsaw to the museum on the site of the "death camp" (outskirts of Lublin) two and a half hours by car. Admission is free, but there are few who want to look. Only in the building of the crematorium, where five furnaces turned prisoners into ashes daily, does a school tour crowd along with a Catholic priest. Preparing to serve a mass in memory of the Poles martyred in Majdanek, the priest covers the tablecloth on the prepared table, takes out the Bible and candles. Teenagers are clearly not interested here - they joke, smile, go out for a smoke. "Do you know who liberated this camp?" I ask. There is confusion among young Poles. "Englishmen?" – uncertainly says the fair-haired girl. "No, Americans!" - the skinny guy interrupts her. - "It seems that there was a landing!". “Russians,” the priest says quietly. Schoolchildren are amazed - the news for them is like a bolt from the blue. On July 22, 1944, the Red Army was greeted in Lublin with flowers and tears of joy. Now we can't wait for the liberation of the concentration camps not even gratitude - just elementary respect.
Almost everything has been preserved in Majdanek. Double barbed-wire fences, SS watchtowers, and blackened crematorium ovens. On the barracks with a gas chamber, a sign is screwed - “Washing and disinfection”. Fifty people were brought here, supposedly “in the bathhouse” - they were given soap, asked to fold their clothes neatly. The victims entered the cement shower room, the door was blocked, and gas was streaming from the holes in the ceiling. It strikes a peephole in the door - some bastard from the SS calmly watched people die in agony. Rare visitors speak quietly, like in a cemetery. An Israeli girl cries on her boyfriend's shoulder. A museum employee reports that 80,000 people died in the camp. "Like this? I wonder. “After all, the figure of 300 thousand appeared at the Nuremberg trials, a third of them were Poles.” It turns out that after 1991 the number of victims was constantly reduced - at first it was decided that 200 thousand people were tortured in Majdanek, recently they completely “cut off” to eighty: they say, they counted more precisely.
I won’t be surprised if, in ten years, the Polish authorities begin to assert such standards - no one died at Majdanek at all, the concentration camp was an exemplary sanatorium-resort where prisoners underwent wellness procedures, Maciej Wisniewski, editor-in-chief of the Strajk Internet portal, is indignant. - My father, who was a partisan during the war, said - “Yes, the Russians brought us a regime that we did not want. But the main thing is that the gas chambers and stoves stopped working in the SS concentration camps.” In Poland, state propaganda at all levels is trying to hush up the merits of Soviet soldiers in saving tens of millions of lives. After all, if it were not for the Red Army, the Majdanek crematorium would continue to smoke every day.
It takes only a minute to walk from the gas chamber - you find yourself in a barrack, stuffed to the brim with old, half-decayed shoes. I look at it for a long time. Expensive shoes of fashionistas (one even made of snakeskin), men's boots, children's shoes. There are more of them - but in 2010, one barrack of the museum burned down for unknown reasons (possibly from arson): 7,000 pairs of shoes were lost in the fire. On November 3, 1943, as part of the so-called “Operation Erntedankfest” (harvest festival), the SS shot 18,400 Jews in Majdanek, including many citizens of the USSR. People were forced to lie down in the ditches on top of each other, “in a layer”, and then they were shot in the back of the head. 611 people then sorted the property of the executed for a week, including this very shoe. The sorters were also destroyed - the men were shot, the women were sent to the gas chamber. In the room next to it is a memorial to nameless prisoners whose identities could not be established: light bulbs are burning in rows, shrouded in balls of barbed wire. An audio recording is played - in Polish, Russian, Yiddish people ask God to save their lives.
The current museum occupies only a quarter of the real territory of Majdanek: founded on October 1, 1941, it was a concentration camp-city with “districts” where women, Jews, and Polish rebels were kept separately. The first inhabitants of the "SS special zone" were 2,000 Soviet prisoners of war, in just a month and a half (!) Three-quarters of them died from unbearable conditions of detention. The exposition of the museum does not focus on this fact. By January 1942, all the other prisoners were dead - the camp was empty until March, until 50,000 new prisoners were brought in. They were destroyed so quickly that one crematorium could not cope with the burning of bodies - a second one had to be built.
The towers above the camp darkened with time, the tree turned jet black. 73 years ago, two SS guards stood on each, watching Majdanek - often, in despair, the prisoners themselves went under the bullets, just to end their torment. The ashes of thousands of prisoners were buried in a huge mausoleum built next to the crematorium - the Red Army soldiers who liberated Majdanek found boxes with ashes, which the guards had prepared for disposal. The furnaces of the crematorium are smoked with fire, it is impossible to clean them from the remains of hundreds of thousands of people soaked into the metal. One of the prisoners who ended up in Majdanek at the age of six (!) Alexander Petrov, a native of the Vitebsk region, said that Jewish children of preschool age were burned alive in these ovens. Survivors in the camp testify that the Germans did not show much hatred towards them. They boringly tried to kill as many people as possible while doing their job. Of all the trees in the camp, one survived. On the rest, the prisoners dying of terrible hunger ate the bark, gnawed the roots.
To look at this camp even now - it becomes uncomfortable. And people lived there for almost 3 years. In the photo - Majdanek itself, a gas chamber, barracks, a crematorium.
For prisoners of war for 25-50 thousand people who will work on the construction of buildings for the SS and police. After the capture of a large number of prisoners of war near Kyiv in March 1942, the camp was supposed to be increased to 250 thousand people, but due to failures on the eastern front, these plans were not destined to come true. In March 1942, mass deportations of Jews from Poland and Slovakia began in Majdanek.
In 1939, about 3.5 million Jews (about 10% of the population) lived in Poland. Before the war, this was a large diaspora in Europe. For example, there are now 6.5 million Jews in the United States and 5.8 million Jews in Israel. During the war, the Polish diaspora was completely destroyed; according to the 2002 census, about 1-2 thousand Jews now live in Poland. The superiority of the Aryan race. Racial Hygiene. Under this pretext, representatives of national and social groups were exterminated.
The camp occupied 270 hectares, of which only 90 are used as a museum. According to the latest data, about 150 thousand people passed through the camp, 80 thousand of whom died, 60 thousand of them Jews. Only a sixth of the prisoners were Soviet prisoners of war, most of them wounded. In Majdanek there was a large block for the wounded and sick.
Now there is a museum on the territory of the camp, created in November 1944.
"Reception bar".
Gas chamber.
Gas cylinders. Initially, carbon monoxide was used for killing, then Zyklon B
Map of camps and prisons in the Lublin region.
Barrack with exposition.
The Nazis put the destruction of people on an industrial basis. No waste. The boots were reused.
Residential bar.
Children's bar. The camp contained children and women.
The column "Three eagles" (the prisoners convinced the Germans that these were three doves), created in 1943 by the prisoners of the camp.
The camp was divided into blocks, between which there was a live barbed wire.
Mausoleum.
It contains the ashes of people cremated in the camp.
Crematorium.
Millions of people passed through concentration camps during World War II. They were organized by both Germany and the USSR. They included both the civilian population from the occupied or liberated territories, and the captured military. Both countries used prisoners in the national economy and did not care much about their health and nutrition. Of the 5.2 - 5.75 million Soviet prisoners of war (prisoners of war in Germany included captured party workers and veterans) 1.8 million survived in German camps, some of them later ended up in the Gulag. Prisoners of war until 1965 were not considered war veterans at all.
2.7 million passed through Soviet prisoner of war camps for the army of Germany and its allies, according to Russian sources, 13% died in custody, according to foreign sources, every third. It’s hard to say who is right now, but according to various sources, from 90 to 110 thousand soldiers of the German army and its allies were captured after the Battle of Stalingrad, of which only 5 thousand people returned to Germany after the war.
