Lublin-Majdanek concentration and extermination camp

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Majdanek concentration camp (Europe)
Majdanek concentration camp (51 ° 13 ′ 9 ″ N, 22 ° 36 ′ 21 ″ E)
Majdanek concentration camp
Localization of Poles in Poland
Majdanek concentration camp
Majdanek / Lublin concentration camp in Poland
Majdanek Memorial (2003)
Majdanek concentration camp crematorium (2005)
Red Army soldiers at the cremation ovens in Majdanek (July 1944)
Watchtower of the Majdanek extermination camp (2006)

The concentration and extermination camp Lublin-Majdanek , abbreviated KZ Majdanek (officially KL Lublin, KZ Lublin , also spelled KL Lublin; Majdan Tatarski was a suburb of Lublin ) was the first concentration camp of the SS inspection of the concentration camps (ICL) in German occupied Poland (Generalgouvernement) . Like the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp , the “Majdanek concentration camp” was also used by the SS as an extermination / death camp at times.

It existed from October 1941 (initially as the " POW camp of the Waffen-SS Lublin", from February 1943 as the "Lublin concentration camp") until its dissolution by the SS on July 23, 1944. During the advance of the Red Army , the concentration camp was evacuated Majdanek was the first of the large extermination camps in Poland to be liberated. Afterwards, the world public learned about the crimes of the National Socialists against the Jews through photo reports in the press.

prehistory

Lublin was a special place for Jews, because in 1930 the largest Talmud school in the world at that time , the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva, was located here . The grave of Jaakow Jizchak Horowitz in the city's Jewish cemetery was a place of pilgrimage. The proportion of the city's Jewish residents was above average.

Later the city became a headquarters of Aktion Reinhardt , d. H. the systematic murder of all Jews and Roma in the General Government. Also the Trawniki concentration camp was built in close proximity and later as a sub-camp reports to the Majdanek concentration camp.

Planning of the Majdanek concentration camp as a prisoner of war camp

On July 17, 1941, Himmler , the Reichsführer SS and chief of the German police , received an order from Hitler to secure the newly occupied eastern territories with the police . With regard to the campaign against the Soviet Union and the associated annihilation plans, this meant a division of tasks with the Wehrmacht .

On the same day, Himmler appointed Brigadefuehrer Odilo Globocnik , Lublin's SS and Police Leader , as his representative for the establishment of the SS and police bases in the new eastern area . An extensive network of militarily fortified SS and police stations was planned, which should also include residential areas for their families. Lublin was chosen as the center of the SS and police barracks , which had an extremely high proportion of Jewish city-dwellers and was now to be settled with Reich Germans. In order to realize the construction plans for a “German” Lublin, the SS planned forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners .

On July 20, 1941, Heinrich Himmler visited Lublin and ordered Globocnik to set up a KL with 25,000 to 50,000 prisoners for use in workshops and buildings for the SS and police . He gave everything that he saw going under Globocnik's direction the name " Program Heinrich ". As is customary in the Reich, the actual construction management for the concentration camp lay with the SS Main Office for Households and Buildings ( H. Kammler ). On September 22, 1941, Kammler issued the building order for the first construction phase of the concentration camp to accommodate 5,000 prisoners. Due to the large number of Soviet prisoners of war after the military success of the Battle of Kiev , the plans were changed just a few days later. Kammler's revised double building order for Lublin and Auschwitz-Birkenau of September 27, 1941 now read:

In Lublin and Auschwitz, prisoner-of-war camps with a capacity of 50,000 prisoners each are to be set up immediately on October 1st in accordance with the instructions given in Berlin and the drawing documents provided.

Construction work on the two POW camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Lublin, began at the same time. At the beginning of November, Kammler expanded the planning of the POW camp to 125,000, in December to 150,000, and in March 1942 even for an unbelievable 250,000 Soviet POWs. Only a fraction of this was realized. In mid-December 1941, barracks for around 20,000 prisoners of war were completed. By then, the construction work had been carried out by around 2,000 Soviet prisoners of war under grueling conditions. Only 500 of them were still alive in mid-November, of which at least 30 percent were unable to work. From mid-December 150 Jews from Globocnik's Lublin forced labor camp on Lipowa Street in L-Majdanek were used. At about the same time, a typhus epidemic broke out here . In January / February 1942 the construction site was unoccupied: all Soviet prisoners of war and the Jewish work detail were dead.

Functions of the camp

The historian Tomasz Kranz classifies the camp as a “multifunctional provisional facility with no clear purpose or objective”. From July 1942 to the end of the year, predominantly Jews and Poles were brought in as victims of the resettlement policy and acts of retaliation. In 1943 Majdanek was a concentration and labor camp for Polish political prisoners and Jews as well as a collection point for rural deportees from Poland and the USSR. The largest extermination campaigns took place in the camp that year. So on the 3rd / 4th November at the so-called Aktion Erntefest over 9,000 Jews from Lublin and the forced labor camp Lublin-Lipowa Street deported to Majdanek and shot together with another 8,000 Jewish forced laborers imprisoned there. From the turn of the year 1943/1944, Majdanek fulfilled the “function of a murder site” for sick prisoners from other camps and deported Polish civilians.

From the spring of 1942, Jewish workers from Majdanek were deployed for construction work in the nearby former airfield. A clothing factory was set up there under SS administration, in which the "material arising from special campaigns", shoes and clothing from the Jews murdered in the "Aktion Reinhardt" was to be sorted, patched and disinfected. Plans for a central replenishment warehouse were not implemented. Among other things, window frames, ammunition boxes, roofing felt and shoes were manufactured in the warehouse for the German equipment works (DAW); In 1942 Majdanek achieved the highest turnover of all DAW companies.

Size of the main camp

The total area of ​​the main camp was 270 hectares. In the final stages, the camp was divided into six fenced-in camp sections (called “fields”), five of which were occupied by prisoner accommodations, a total of more than 100 barracks . An economic complex comprised agricultural areas, greenhouses and workshops such as carpentry, tailoring or a shoemaker's workshop.

An unusually high mortality rate was recorded due to the constant temporary construction of buildings, poor water supply and inadequate sanitary conditions. The number of prisoners housed in the camp fluctuated mostly between 10,000 and 15,000 and did not reach 25,000 until the summer of 1943.

Warehouse staff

see main article: Camp Personnel in Majdanek Concentration Camp

The size of the workforce grew with the expansion of the camp and the connection of some satellite camps . At the end of 1943, the camp staff consisted of 1,258 people, including 261 in the headquarters staff. Three of the commanders had a criminal record for embezzlement and embezzlement; Koch was later convicted of a corruption affair and executed on Himmler's orders. Within three years, five different commanders were responsible for the camp, which even among SS men had a bad reputation with "intolerable conditions".

Camp commandant Period
Karl Otto Koch September 1941 to August 1942
Max Koegel August 1942 to November 1942
Hermann Florstedt November 1942 to October 1943
Martin Gottfried Weiss November 1943 to May 1944
Arthur Liebehenschel May 1944 to July 1944

Subcamp

see main article: List of satellite camps of the Majdanek concentration camp

The satellite camps were located in the vicinity of the Majdanek concentration camp. For example, the prisoners did forced labor in a quarry, including in armaments factories and workshops.

Majdanek's part in the Holocaust

Stumbling block for Sonja Kesten, who died in the Majdanek concentration camp

Majdanek is also referred to as an extermination camp because of the number of victims, which were initially estimated to be many times overestimated. It is now unclear whether Majdanek was included in the planning of the systematic mass murder of the Jews. The director of the State Museum in Majdanek, Tomasz Kranz, comes to the conclusion that “direct extermination” was of rather secondary importance here and “fulfilled something like an 'accompanying function' and was more closely related to the economic aspects of this crime than its mechanisms of destruction “Was. The historian Barbara Schwindt refers to the mass extermination in spring to autumn 1943 and speaks of "Majdanek as an extermination camp" at least for this period.

It is believed that 60 percent of the victims perished from emaciation, forced labor, poor treatment and illness. Mass executions were carried out by shooting in early 1942, November 1943, and the first half of 1944. In addition, it is considered "very likely" that three gas chambers were also used for mass killing between September 1942 and October 1943, with the focus on the murder of Jews from Warsaw and Białystok in the summer of 1943.

Gas chambers

The scarce sources allow neither reliable information about how long these gas chambers were operated nor how many victims were murdered in them. In contrast to the extermination camps of Aktion Reinhardt , gassings in Majdanek were not carried out using engine exhaust fumes.

It is disputed whether Zyklon B was used here . In 1985 Jean-Claude Pressac doubted that people were murdered in these gas chambers by exposure to hydrogen cyanide gas. Tomasz Kranz, on the other hand, cites evidence and an eyewitness who reports on a gassing operation with Zyklon B. Barbara Schwindt also assumes that Zyklon B was used for killing "at least temporarily" in Majdanek; however, the frequency and timing of such actions cannot be deduced.

Both Schwindt and Kranz agree that carbon monoxide from steel bottles was also used in the gas chambers of Majdanek to kill people. This method had been practiced in the killing centers of Operation T4 and was initially also tried out in the Belzec extermination camp .

See also: The gas chambers of Majdanek

Casualty numbers

For a long time there was only rough estimates of the number of victims who were killed or died there in Majdanek up to autumn 1943 using different methods. First figures after the liberation in 1944 amounted to 1,700,000 victims. In 1948 it was assumed that 360,000 people died in Majdanek. Later estimates assumed a total of 235,000 victims (110,000 of them Jews); With these estimates, the number of victims from mass gassing in Majdanek was assumed to be less than 50,000. New research from 2006 reduces the total number of those who perished in Majdanek to 78,000, including 59,000 Jews.

So far, these figures have not taken into account the contemporary information from the so-called Höfle telegram, which was discovered late . It explicitly stated the number of Jews killed by the end of 1942 for Majdanek as 24,733. Barbara Schwindt, on the other hand, describes it as unlikely that a large number of victims were murdered and cremated in the camp by the end of December 1942.

The dissolution and the liberation

An aerial reconnaissance photo from June 24, 1944 shows the demolition of barracks (foreground).

As a result of the Red Army's rapid advance on Lublin during Operation Bagration at the end of July 1944, the Majdanek concentration camp was hastily evacuated by the SS. Before the prisoners were evacuated, all documents were destroyed and the buildings including the large crematorium were set on fire. In the hurry to retreat, however, the Germans failed to destroy the gas chambers and most of the prisoner barracks. The Majdanek concentration camp was disbanded by the SS on July 23, 1944. On July 24, 1944, the Red Army (General SIBogdanov's 2nd Panzer Army, Marshal ISKonev's 1st Ukrainian Front) liberated Majdanek concentration camp. Members of the Red Army found 1,000 sick Soviet prisoners of war in the camp. Majdanek concentration camp was the first concentration camp to be liberated in World War II.

Western journalists came to Majdanek for a tour in August 1944. As a result, depictions of the mass murder appeared on the front pages of US newspapers and magazines. Life magazine reported for the first time on August 28, 1944 in a full-page article about Majdanek and a memorial service on August 6 with the headline: Funeral in Lublin. Russians honor Jews who were gassed and burned en masse by the Nazis.

The memorial

Mausoleum and Watchtower (2008)

As early as August 1944, one month after the dissolution, the plan came up to build a museum on the former camp site. This plan was finally implemented in November 1944 and the Majdanek State Museum opened as the first memorial in Europe to deal with the Second World War . In July 1947, the Parliament of the Polish Republic defined the tasks of the museum as "collecting and preserving evidence and material relating to Nazi crimes, making them available to the public and investigating them in a scientific manner".

The memorial complex is now located on part of the former camp site. A monumental work of art made of concrete and natural stone designed by the Polish sculptor and architect Wiktor Tołkin was erected at the location of the original entrance to the warehouse, symbolizing the term 'Gate to Hell', which is common in the warehouse. An education and visitor center is located in the immediate vicinity of the memorial. Wooden buildings such as watchtowers and barracks were reconstructed or repaired on the camp site. The preserved facilities such as showers, disinfection baths, gas chambers, the dissection table for the murdered prisoners and the cremation ovens are accessible in these buildings. A mausoleum with a diameter of around 20 meters contains the ashes and remains of murdered people from the crematorium and the adjacent firing trenches.

Different aspects of the camp are discussed in several barracks: The admission, the (partial) disinfection and the murder of the people in the gas chamber are documented. A barrack contains an overview model of the planned and then realized camp, contemporary and modern photos are juxtaposed. Some of the shoes that were removed from the prisoners are exhibited in two long wire entanglements. Biographies and selected exhibits, which exemplarily illustrate life in the camp, are in a multimedia presentation. A sleeping barrack shows the wooden bunks.

Two exhibits are presented on the site, which were produced by prisoners as part of the cynical campaign 'Decorate your home', which was promoted by the camp SS in 1944. On the one hand, there is a turtle on display that was designed by the sculptor Maria Albin Boniecki and was located in field III. There is also the reconstruction of the column with three eagles designed by Boniecki . It was built by Polish political prisoners in the spring of 1943, destroyed after the war and then reconstructed against Boniecki's will. While the camp management saw the column as ornament, the work of art has been a memorial since its creation because human ashes from the crematorium were secretly placed in the stele.

The museum has designed numerous exhibitions, has regularly published a specialist magazine ("Zeszyty Majdanka") since 1965 and has also held conferences and seminars on the history of the Majdanek camp and the German occupation of the Lublin region since the 1970s.

In 1988 were from last bell founder master Peter Schilling Apolda (his father Franz Schilling had the Buchenwald bell cast) and his wife Margarete Schilling a bronze - bells designed, cast and delivered. The bell has a g sharp 0 and a weight of 5,000 kilograms.

The museum also has two branch museums, the former extermination camps of Aktion Reinhardt Belzec (since 2001) and Sobibor (since 2012).

Legal proceedings

Anton Thernes at the Majdanek Trial, Lublin 1944

A Polish-Soviet commission began the first investigation of the crimes at the end of July 1944. A trial took place in Lublin which resulted in six death sentences in November 1944. Two years later, also in Lublin, there were negotiations against 95 members of the SS. In 1948, after a two-year trial, seven of the accused were sentenced to death, including the former commandant of the women's camp, Else Ehrich , the others received prison terms .

In the third Majdanek trial from 1975 to 1981, 16 former SS members were indicted before the Düsseldorf Regional Court . Hermine Ryan née Braunsteiner received a life sentence, seven others, including Hildegard Brille , sentences between three and twelve years. One defendant was acquitted. Four other defendants had already been acquitted in 1979 after a trial had been separated for lack of evidence, since many witnesses could no longer clearly identify the perpetrators after such a long time. Two defendants were incapacitated and Alice Orlowski died during the trial. These court rulings caused a lengthy debate in the Federal Republic of Germany, as many observers found the sentences imposed to be too low.

literature

  • Dieter Ambach, Thomas Köhler: Lublin-Majdanek. The concentration and extermination camp as reflected in the testimony of witnesses. Düsseldorf 2004 (= Legal History of North Rhine-Westphalia. Volume 12), ISSN  1615-5718 .
  • Johannes R. Becher : The children's shoes from Lublin .
  • Tomasz Kranz: The Lublin concentration camp - between planning and implementation. In: Ulrich Herbert , Karin Orth , Christoph Dieckmann : The National Socialist Concentration Camps . FiTb, Frankfurt 1998, ISBN 3-596-15516-9 .
  • Tomasz Kranz (Ed.): Educational work and historical learning in the Majdanek Memorial. Panstwowe Muzeum na Majdanku, Lublin 2000, ISBN 978-83-907532-5-6 .
  • Tomasz Kranz: The recording of deaths and prisoner mortality in the Lublin concentration camp. In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft , ZfG 55, 2007, no.3.
  • Tomasz Kranz: Lublin-Majdanek main camp. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 7: Niederhagen / Wewelsburg, Lublin-Majdanek, Arbeitsdorf, Herzogenbusch (Vught), Bergen-Belsen, Mittelbau-Dora. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-52967-2 , index of contents of the series
  • Tomasz Kranz, Danuta Olesiuk: The Shaping of the Majdanek Historic Landscape and Making it into a Museum. In: Wilfried Wiedemann, Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn (eds.): Landscape and memory: Bergen-Belsen, Esterwegen, Falstad, Majdanek. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-89975-268-7 , pp. 211-227.
  • Tomasz Kranz: Majdanek. The German concentration camp in Lublin . In: Gorch Pieken, Matthias Rogg, Military History Museum: Shoes from the dead. Dresden and the Shoah . Dresden 2014, ISBN 978-3-95498-054-3 .
  • Elissa Mailänder Koslov: Violence in everyday work. The SS guards of the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp 1942-1944. Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-86854-212-7 . Interview (approx. 6 minutes) with the author on Deutschlandfunk, studio time, from cultural and social sciences , broadcast on October 8, 2009, MP3 .
  • Josef Marszalek: Majdanek. Concentration camp in Lublin. Interpress Publishing House, Warsaw 1984, ISBN 83-223-1934-7 .
  • Tadeusz Mencel: Majdanek 1941–1944. Wydawniczwo Lubelskie, Lublin 1991, ISBN 83-222-0566-X . Polish standard work; therein: comprehensive bibliography.
  • Ingrid Müller-Münch: The women of Majdanek. About the destroyed lives of the victims and the murderers. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1982.
  • Zacheusz Pawlak: "I survived ..." A prisoner reports on Majdanek. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1979, ISBN 3-455-08858-9 .
  • Tomasz Samek: In the middle of Europe. Majdanek concentration camp. Texts by Edward Balawejder, Tomasz Kranz and Barbara Rommé, exhibition catalog. Stadtmuseum Münster 2001, ISBN 83-907532-8-6 .
  • Günther Schwarberg: The jeweler from Majdanek. Göttingen 1998, ISBN 3-88243-625-5 .
  • Barbara Schwindt: The Majdanek Concentration and Extermination Camp. Functional change in the context of the " final solution ". Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-3123-7 .
  • Mordechai Strigler: Majdanek. An early eyewitness report from the death camp. zu Klampen Verlag, Springe 2016, ISBN 978-3-86674-527-8 .
  • M. Weinmann (Ed.): The National Socialist Camp System (CCP). Two thousand and one, Frankfurt 1990, 1998 DNB 901382663
  • Rudolf Vrba : I cannot forgive: my escape from Auschwitz . Verlag Schoeffling, Frankfurt / Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-89561416-3 . (Rudolf Vrba, survivor of the Holocaust , reports on his stay in the Majdanek concentration camp).

Movie

  • Aleksander Ford (Director): "Majdanek - Europe's Cemetery." Documentary, 1945; 24th min.
  • Wolfgang Schoen (director): Son of the victim - Son of the perpetrator - The story of an unusual friendship. Documentation, 2005; 45 min. (The joint journey of two men of the children's generation, Roman Mach and Frank Reiss, to the place where the father of one died.)

Web links

Commons : Majdanek concentration camp  - album with pictures, videos and audio files
Commons : Majdanek concentration camp  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  • ( * ) Tomasz Kranz: The Lublin concentration camp - between planning and implementation. In: Ulrich Herbert, Karin Orth, Christoph Dieckmann: The National Socialist Concentration Camps. FiTb, Frankfurt 1998, ISBN 3-596-15516-9 .
  1. ↑ a b c p. 369.
  2. ↑ p. 366.
  3. ↑ p. 368.
  4. ↑ p. 370.
  5. ↑ p. 370f.
  6. ↑ p. 373.
  7. ↑ p. 381.
  8. ↑ p. 379.
  9. ↑ a b p. 379/380.
  10. ↑ p. 380.
  • further footnotes:
  1. ^ Quote from Pohl's letter of May 16, 1942; after Barbara Schwindt: The Majdanek concentration and extermination camp. Functional change in the context of the " final solution ". Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-3123-7 , p. 116.
  2. ↑ Barbara Schwindt: The Majdanek concentration and extermination camp. P. 154.
  3. ↑ Camp map see Tomasz Kranz: Lublin-Majdanek - main camp. P. 38.
  4. ^ Tomasz Kranz: Lublin-Majdanek - main camp. In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror. Vol. 7, Munich 2008, p. 43.
  5. ↑ Thomas Sandkühler: Review . In: Historische Literatur , Volume 9, 2011, Issue 3, p. 152, footnote 3, edoc.hu-berlin.de (PDF)
  6. ↑ Barbara Schwindt: The Majdanek concentration and extermination camp. P. 205, books.google.de
  7. ↑ Pressac on gas chambers in Majdanek, accessed December 31, 2008.
  8. ↑ Barbara Schwindt: The Majdanek concentration and extermination camp. P. 161.
  9. ↑ Barbara Schwindt: The Majdanek concentration and extermination camp. P. 161f.
  10. ↑ Saul Friedländer : The Third Reich and the Jews; the years of persecution 1933-1939; the years of annihilation 1939 - 1945. Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-56681-3 , p. 739. From March 17, 1942, the mass murder in Belzec was carried out with diesel engine exhaust gases. (see: Mass murder in the Belzec camp )
  11. ↑ Figures from Majdanek ( Memento of March 2, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed December 26, 2007).
  12. ↑ Tomasz Kranz: The recording of deaths and prisoner mortality in the Lublin concentration camp . In: "Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft" (ZfG) 55 (2007), no. 3, p. 243.
  13. ↑ Peter Witte, Stephen Tyas: A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of Jews during 'Einsatz Reinhard' 1942 . In: “Holocaust and Genocid Studies” 15 (2001) V 3, pp. 468-486 (on the Internet Num. 15, Vol. 3) .
  14. ↑ Barbara Schwindt: The concentration and extermination camp Majdanek , pp. 183–186.
  15. ^ Tomasz Kranz: Lublin-Majdanek main camp. In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps . Volume 7, Munich 2005, p. 68.
  16. ^ Lublin Funeral. Russians honor Jews whom Nazis gassed and cremated in mass . In: Life . tape 17 , no. 9 , August 28, 1944, pp. 34 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  17. ↑ Danuta Olesiuk, Anna Wójcik: 70 lat Państwowego Muzeum na Majdanku . Lublin 2014, ISBN 978-83-62816-20-0 , p. 7.
  18. ↑ according to the information on the inscription boards on the memorial site
  19. ↑ Danuta Olesiuk, Anna Wójcik: 70 lat Państwowego Muzeum na Majdanku . Lublin 2014, ISBN 978-83-62816-20-0 , p. 8.
  20. ^ State Museum at Majdanek: Mission statement ( Memento from December 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed December 5, 2014).
  21. ^ First Majdanek trial on jewishvirtuallibrary.org
  22. ↑ Düsseldorf Regional Court speaks judgments in the Majdanek trial. In: Landtag Intern. June 26, 2001 ( Landtag North Rhine-Westphalia ).
  23. ↑ Düsseldorf Majdanek trial on jewishvirtuallibrary.org
    Cf. After acquittal, escape into the judge's     room - tumult in the Düsseldorf Majdanek trial. In: Hamburger Abendblatt , April 20, 1979, p. 2.

Coordinates: 51 ° 13 ′ 9 ″  N , 22 ° 36 ′ 21 ″  E