JACOB JR, MY JEWISH WORLD. KONZENTRATIONSLAGER MAJDANEK, CHAPTER I. LUBLIN/POLAND

Tuesday, Cheshvan 21, 5776. November 3, 2015.

Shalom! World.

Konzentrationslager Lublin, popularly called Majdanek, functioned from October 1941 to July 1944. Originally it was supposed to be the source of free workforce which was going to be used while building the SS district in Lublin and realizing the economic enterprises aimed at germanization of the town and region. However, in practice Majdanek combined a range of functions. It was a death camp for the Jews, concentration camp for prisioners of various nacionalities, penalty and transit camp for the rural populationof Lubelskie region, camp for Soviet prisioners of warr, as well as an execution site for people arrested outside the  camp by German police authorities (so-called death transports).

Majdanek, situated in the south-east outskirts of Lublin, occupied the area of 270 hectares. It consisted of three sectors: the SS segment, the administration section and prisioner area, which was made up of five fields with wooden barracks for the inmates.

The camp was maneged by over 200 SS men and 20 female supervisors; it was watched by about 1000 guards. In the first yer of the camp's existence it was only men that were taken prisioners. In October 1942 a camp of women was estabilished, and from March 1943 children were imprisioned as well.  The vast majority of prisioners were Jewish and Polish; the second biggest group was URSS citizens. The ethnic structure of the camp radically changed at  the end of 1943 and the beginning of 1944, when transports with prisioners form over 20 nationalities arrived from other concentrarion camps. The average number of prisioners ranged from 10 to 15 thousand inmates. On the basis of available sources it is not possiblee to determine the precise number of all the deported people: though it is estimated that approximately 150 thousand people passed through the camp.

Due to wretched living conditions, Majdanek won a reputation as being one of the toughest camps. The prisioners were decimated by exhausting work during the construction of the camp, famine and typhoid epidemics. The ill and the exhausted were put before the firing squad or murdered  by the SS personnel with poisonous gases. Most of the victims of this selection were Jewsish. Some of them, mainly children and women, were killed in gas chambers shortly after arrival. 

On November 3, 1943, during a mass murder known under a code phrase "Erntefest", in the execution ditches the germans shot about 18 thousand Jews who were prisioners at Majdanek and other functioning forced labour camps in Lublin. In 1944 regular executions were held here: the ones who were killed here were the prisioners of Lublin Castle and the civilians, mainly Polish, arrested in reprisal for military actions. On July 21, 1944, the day before the liquidation of the camp, 700 people from death transports were executed. 

Approximately 150.000 people passed through the camp and about 60 thousand Jews and 20 thousand people of other nationalities (majority of which were Polish) were killed in Konzentrationslager Lublin. 

The tragic history of KZ Majdanek ended on July 22, 1944, when the germans abandoned it in fear of aproaching soviet troops. Together with the germans, the last transport of prisioners was sent to Auschwitz. In their hasty escape, the germans tried to destroy the  traces of what they have done. They set fire to the crematorium building and buried the records of the camo offices after first trying to  burn them.

In the summer of 1944, Majdanek was the palce where for a couple of weeks NKVD detained the Home Army soldiers, who were later deported to Siberia.

The Eagles Column

The first commemoration of the victims of KZ Majdanek dates from when the camp was still operating. In the roll-call square of field III in May 1943, under the pretext of decorating the prisioners fields, Polish political prisioners erected a concrete column topped by three eagles taking flight. They secretely placed remains of victims inside the base of the column. The camp SS were convinced that the memorial symbolized a Nazi emblem.

"I gave the birds the form of half-doves, half-eagles. The dove is a symbol of the innocent soul, and the eagle of the nation and victory. I linked the birds in a symbol of victory and embodied them as a trio of Man, Woman, and Child, with their feet resting on the globe they are protecting." Albin Maria Boniecki, Majdanek prisioner, creator of Three Eagles Column.

Shalom! Aleichem.

Suporte cultural:  Jacob Jr. B.A.C.E., avec L'Integration d'Association avec Israel et dans le Monde/Cz.