Thernes was married and had six children in
Trier before the Nazi German
invasion of Poland. A member of the
SS, Thernes served as the last administrative chief of KL Lublin / Majdanek. He was also in charge of food and slave labour administration, starvation rationing, and the maintenance of camp structures including the storage depot for property and valuables stolen from the
Holocaust victims at the killing centers in
Belzec,
Sobibor, and
Treblinka. Thernes was given the task of destroying the evidence of
crimes against humanity and genocide, but ran out of time due to his ineptitude and lethargy. Thernes was publicly hanged on 3 December 1944 along with five other war criminals, close to the gas chambers and the
Majdanek crematorium. ==Harvest Festival==