Construction Konzentrationslager Lublin was established in October 1941 on the orders of
Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, forwarded to
Odilo Globocnik soon after Himmler's visit to Lublin on July 17–20, 1941 in the course of
Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The original plan drafted by Himmler was for the camp to hold at least 25,000 POWs. After large numbers of Soviet
prisoners-of-war were captured during the
Battle of Kiev, the projected camp capacity was subsequently increased to 50,000. Construction for that many began on October 1, 1941 (as it did also in
Auschwitz-Birkenau, which had received the same order). In early November, the plans were extended to allow for 125,000 inmates and in December to 150,000. Majdanek was made into a secondary sorting and storage depot at the onset of Operation Reinhard, for property and valuables taken from the victims at the killing centers in Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. There are two identical buildings at Majdanek where
Zyklon B was used. Executions were carried out in barrack 41 with crystalline
hydrogen cyanide released by the Zyklon B. The same poison gas pellets were used to disinfect prisoner clothing in barrack 42. Due to the pressing need for foreign manpower in the war industry, Jewish laborers from Poland were originally spared. For a time they were either kept in the 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 primarily at the
Steyr-Daimler-Puch weapons/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. By August 1943, there were 16,206 prisoners in the main camp, of which 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 nationals. According to the data from the official Majdanek State Museum, 300,000 people were inmates of the camp at one time or another. The prisoner population at any given time was much lower. From October 1942 onward Majdanek also had female overseers. These SS guards, trained at the
Ravensbrück concentration camp, included
Elsa Ehrich,
Hermine Boettcher-Brueckner,
Hermine Braunsteiner,
Hildegard Lächert, Rosy Suess (Süss), Elisabeth Knoblich-Ernst, Charlotte Karla Mayer-Woellert, and
Gertrud Heise (1942–1944), who were later convicted as war criminals. Majdanek did not initially have subcamps. These were incorporated in early autumn 1943 when the remaining forced labor camps around Lublin, including Budzyn,
Trawniki,
Poniatowa, Krasnik, Pulawy, as well as the "Airstrip" ("
Airfield"), and
"Lipowa 7") concentration camps became sub-camps of Majdanek. From September 1, 1941, to May 28, 1942, Alfons Bentele headed the Administration in the camp. Alois Kurz, SS
Untersturmführer, was a German staff member at Majdanek, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and at Mittelbau-Dora. He was not charged. On June 18, 1943,
Fritz Ritterbusch moved to KL Lublin to become aide-de-camp to the Commandant. Due to the camp's proximity to Lublin, prisoners were able to communicate with the outside world through letters smuggled out by civilian workers who entered the camp. From February 1943 onward, the Germans allowed the
Polish Red Cross and
Central Welfare Council to bring in food items to the camp.
Cremation facilities Until June 1942, the bodies of those murdered at Majdanek were buried in mass graves (these were later exhumed and burned by the prisoners assigned to
Sonderkommando 1005). From June 1942, the SS disposed of the bodies by burning them, either on pyres made from the chassis of old lorries or in a crematorium. The so-called
First Crematorium had two ovens which were brought to Majdanek from the
Sachsenhausen concentration camp. it is no longer in existence today. The next morning, 25 Jews who had succeeded in hiding were found and shot. Meanwhile, 611 other prisoners, 311 women and 300 men, were commanded to sort through the clothes of the dead and cover the burial trenches. The men were later assigned to
Sonderkommando 1005, where they had to exhume the same bodies for cremation. These men were then executed. The 311 women were subsequently sent to
Auschwitz, where they were murdered by gas. By the end of
Aktion Erntefest ("Harvest Festival"), Majdanek had only 71 Jews left out of the total number of 6,562 prisoners still alive. In addition, Commandant
Rudolf Höss of Auschwitz wrote in his memoirs, while awaiting trial in Poland, that one method of murder used at Majdanek (KZ Lublin) was Zyklon B.
Evacuation In late July 1944, with Soviet forces rapidly approaching Lublin, the Germans hastily evacuated the camp and partially destroyed the crematoria before Soviet
Red Army troops arrived on July 24, 1944. Majdanek is the best-preserved camp of the
Holocaust due to incompetence by its deputy commander,
Anton Thernes. It was the first major concentration camp liberated by Allied forces, and the horrors found there were widely publicised. Although 1,000 inmates had previously been
forcibly marched to Auschwitz (of whom only half arrived alive), the Red Army still found thousands of inmates, mainly POWs, still in the camp, and ample evidence of the mass murder that had occurred there. ==Victims==