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Majdanek was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, and some 227 structures in all, placing it among the largest of Nazi concentration camps. Although initially intended for forced labor rather than extermination, it was used to murder people on an industrial scale during Operation Reinhard, the German plan to murder all Polish Jews within their own occupied homeland. In operation from 1 October 1941 to 22 July 1944, it was captured nearly intact. The rapid advance of the Soviet Red Army during Operation Bagration prevented the SS from destroying most of its infrastructure, and Deputy Camp Commandant Anton Thernes failed to remove the most incriminating evidence of war crimes.
Lublin Voivodeship is a voivodeship (province) of Poland, located in the southeastern part of the country, with its capital being the city of Lublin.
Aufseherin was the position title for a female guard in Nazi concentration camps. Of the 50,000 guards who served in the concentration camps, training records indicate that approximately 3,500 were women. In 1942, the first female guards arrived at Auschwitz and Majdanek from Ravensbrück. The year after, the Nazis began conscripting women because of a shortage of male guards. In the context of these camps, the German position title of Aufseherin translates to (female) "overseer" or "attendant". Later female guards were dispersed to Bolzano (1944–1945), Kaiserwald-Riga (1943–44), Mauthausen, Stutthof (1942–1945), Vaivara (1943–1944), Vught (1943–1944), and at Nazi concentration camps, subcamps, work camps, detention camps and other posts.
The German camps in occupied Poland during World War II were built by the Nazis between 1939 and 1945 throughout the territory of the Polish Republic, both in the areas annexed in 1939, and in the General Government formed by Nazi Germany in the central part of the country (see map). After the 1941 German attack on the Soviet Union, a much greater system of camps was established, including the world's only industrial extermination camps constructed specifically to carry out the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question".
Operation Harvest Festival was the murder of up to 43,000 Jews at the Majdanek, Poniatowa and Trawniki concentration camps by the SS, the Order Police battalions, and the Ukrainian Sonderdienst on 3–4 November 1943.
The Trawniki concentration camp was set up by Nazi Germany in the village of Trawniki about 40 kilometres (25 mi) southeast of Lublin during the occupation of Poland in World War II. Throughout its existence the camp served a dual function. It was organized on the grounds of the former Polish sugar refinery of the Central Industrial Region, and subdivided into at least three distinct zones.
The Lublin Ghetto was a World War II ghetto created by Nazi Germany in the city of Lublin on the territory of General Government in occupied Poland. The ghetto inmates were mostly Polish Jews, although a number of Roma were also brought in. Set up in March 1941, the Lublin ghetto was one of the first Nazi-era ghettos slated for liquidation during the deadliest phase of the Holocaust in occupied Poland. Between mid-March and mid-April 1942 over 30,000 Jews were delivered to their deaths in cattle trucks at the Bełżec extermination camp and additional 4,000 at Majdanek.
Else Lieschen Frida "Elsa" Ehrich was a convicted war criminal who served as a Schutzstaffel (SS) guard in Nazi concentration camps, including at Kraków-Płaszów and the Majdanek concentration camp during World War II. She was tried in Lublin, Poland at the Majdanek Trials and sentenced to death for war crimes. Ehrich was hanged on 26 October 1948.
Gertrud Elli Heise was a female guard and later, SS overseer at several concentration camps during the Second World War. Heise was born in Berlin, Germany. She was tried for war crimes in 1946.
The Majdanek trials were a series of consecutive war-crime trials held in Poland and in Germany during and after World War II, constituting the overall longest Nazi war crimes trial in history spanning over 30 years. The first judicial trial of Majdanek extermination camp officials took place from November 27, 1944, to December 2, 1944, in Lublin, Poland. The last one, held at the District Court of Düsseldorf began on November 26, 1975, and concluded on June 30, 1981. It was West Germany's longest and most expensive trial, lasting 474 sessions.
Poniatowa concentration camp in the town of Poniatowa in occupied Poland, 36 kilometres (22 mi) west of Lublin, was established by the SS in the latter half of 1941, initially to hold Soviet prisoners of war following Operation Barbarossa. By mid-1942, about 20,000 Soviet POWs had perished there from hunger, disease and executions. The camp was known at that time as the Stalag 359 Poniatowa. Afterwards, the Stammlager was redesigned and expanded as a concentration camp to provide slave labour supporting the German war effort, with workshops run by the SS Ostindustrie (Osti) on the grounds of the prewar Polish telecommunications equipment factory founded in the late 1930s. Poniatowa became part of the Majdanek concentration camp system of subcamps in the early autumn of 1943. The wholesale massacre of its mostly Jewish workforce took place during the Aktion Erntefest, thus concluding the Operation Reinhard in General Government.
The Majdanek State Museum is a memorial museum and education centre founded in the fall of 1944 on the grounds of the Nazi Germany Majdanek death camp located in Lublin, Poland. It was the first museum of its kind in the world, devoted entirely to the memory of atrocities committed in the network of concentration, slave-labor, and extermination camps and subcamps of KL Lublin during World War II. The museum performs several tasks including scholarly research into the Holocaust in Poland. It houses a permanent collection of rare artifacts, archival photographs, and testimony.
Karl Streibel was the second and last commander of the Trawniki concentration camp – one of the subcamps of the KL Lublin system of Nazi concentration camps in occupied Poland during World War II.
The Sobibór Museum or the Museum of the Former Sobibór Nazi Death Camp, is a Polish state-owned museum devoted to remembering the atrocities committed at the former Sobibor extermination camp located on the outskirts of Sobibór near Lublin. The Nazi German death camp was set up in occupied Poland during World War II, as part of the Jewish extermination program known as the Operation Reinhard, which marked the most deadly phase of the Holocaust in Poland. The camp was run by the SS Sonderkommando Sobibor headed by Franz Stangl. The number of Jews from Poland and elsewhere who were gassed and cremated there between April 1942 and 14 October 1943 is estimated at 250,000; possibly more, including those who came from other Reich-occupied countries.
Szebnie was a forced-labor camp established during World War II by Nazi Germany in the General Government in the south-eastern part of occupied Poland. It was located near the town of Szebnie approximately 10 kilometres (6 mi) east of Jasło and 42 km (26 mi) south-west of Rzeszów. The facility was constructed in 1940 originally as horse stables for the Wehrmacht, adjacent to a manorial estate where the German officers stationed (photo). Over the course of the camp's operation thousands of people perished there, including Soviet prisoners of war, Polish Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, and Romani people. The charred remains of the camp were entered by the Soviets on 8 September 1944.
Sonderdienst were mostly non-German Nazi paramilitary formations created in the occupied General Government during the occupation of Poland in World War II. They were based on similar SS formations called Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz operating in the Warthegau district of German-annexed western Poland in 1939.
During World War II, Trawniki men were Eastern European Nazi collaborators, consisting of either volunteers or recruits from prisoner-of-war camps set up by Nazi Germany for Soviet Red Army soldiers captured in the border regions during Operation Barbarossa launched in June 1941. Thousands of these volunteers served in the General Government territory of German-occupied Poland until the end of World War II. Trawnikis belonged to a category of Hiwis, Nazi auxiliary forces recruited from native subjects serving in various jobs such as concentration camp guards.
Reserve Police Battalion 101 was a Nazi German paramilitary formation of the uniformed police force known as the Ordnungspolizei, the organization formed by the Nazi unification of the civilian police forces in the country in 1936, placed under the leadership of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and grouped into battalions in 1939. One of many such Nazi German Order Police battalions, Reserve-Polizei-Bataillon 101 was formed in Hamburg and was deployed in September 1939 along with the German armed forces (Wehrmacht) in the invasion of Poland.
Többens and Schultz was a Nazi German textile manufacturing conglomerate making German uniforms, socks and garments in the Warsaw Ghetto and elsewhere, during the occupation of Poland in World War II. It was owned and operated by two major war profiteers: Fritz Emil Schultz from Danzig, and a convicted war criminal, Walter C. Többens.
Otto Hantke was a German SS-Unterscharführer, convicted murderer, and war criminal in German-occupied Poland during the Holocaust. Hantke joined the Nazi Party and the SS by 1933. Between at least 1942 and 1944, Hantke served as the commandant of the Budzyń labor camp and Poniatowa concentration camp, both subcamps of the Majdanek concentration camp, and was an SS officer at the Lipowa 7 concentration camp and Stutthof concentration camp.
References
- ↑ Majdanek State Museum (2014), Witryna Państwowego Muzeum na Majdanku Archived 2007-12-22 at the Wayback Machine . Retrieved 6 March 2015.
- 1 2 "Forced labor-camps in District Lublin: Budzyn, Trawniki, Poniatowa, Krasnik, Pulawy, Airstrip and Lipowa camps". Holocaust Encyclopedia: Lublin/Majdanek Concentration Camp. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved April 19, 2013.
- ↑ J Mayer (20 Feb 2011). "KL Lublin-Majdanek". Der Ort des Terrors - Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager. Band 5. Axis History. Retrieved 17 July 2014.
- ↑ ARC (6 July 2006), SS-Polizeiführerkommando Sportplatz , Aktion Reinhard, homepage.
- Państwowe Muzeum na Majdanku Archived 2007-12-22 at the Wayback Machine (The Majdanek State Museum) official website.
- Internet portal "KL Lublin" (in Polish)
- Towarzystwo Opieki nad Majdankiem – Oddział w Białymstoku Archived 2016-10-07 at the Wayback Machine (The Society for the Preservation of Majdanek) official website.