The Second World War, however, like the First, led to many deaths. However, not only soldiers and officers died, but also innocent people who simply did not fit the Aryan type of appearance, for the purity of which the German dictator-tyrant Adolf Hitler fought so hard. Many people died in concentration camps at the hands of cruel executioners. One of the largest camps was called Majdanek, and we will talk about it.
Order
Majdanek concentration camp was located in the suburbs of Lublin, in Poland. It got its name from the Turkic word for "square" (maidan). In fact, the construction of such camps began with the filing of Hitler, who instructed Heinrich Himmler, one of the dignitaries of the Third Reich, to establish total control over the eastern territories occupied by Germany.
On the same day, July 17, 1941, Himmler appointed one of the leaders of the police - Odilo Globocnik - responsible for the creation of the SS structure andconcentration camps in occupied Poland. In addition, Globocnik was responsible for the partial Germanization of Poland. The Majdanek concentration camp, located in the suburbs of Lublin, was to become the central one in the eastern part of the occupied territory. The construction of the complex was to be carried out by the prisoners themselves.
Building Ordinance
The official order to establish the camp was given on July 20, 1941. It was on this day that Himmler announced the order to Globocnik during his visit to Lublin. The order said that it was necessary to create a camp that would be able to accommodate about 25-50 thousand people, who, in turn, would be busy building departmental buildings for the SS and the German police. In fact, the construction of the complex was entrusted to Hans Kammler, who held one of the leading positions in the budget and construction department of the SS. Already in September, he ordered to start creating a part of the concentration camp, which could accommodate at least 5 thousand people.
However, some time later, an incredible number of prisoners of war were captured near Kyiv, and Kammler changed his instructions, ordering the creation of 2 prisoner of war camps - "Majdanek" and "Auschwitz", designed for 50 thousand people each.
Building camps
Initially, the first of the camps was built on the outskirts of the city of Lublin, near the cemetery. Not everyone liked this arrangement, and the civil authorities began to protest, after which Globocnik moved it to anotherterritory, about 3 km from the city. After that, the first concentration camp prisoners arrived here.
Expansion of territory
Already in November, Kammler ordered to expand the camp, first to 125,000 prisoners, and a month later to 150. A few months later, this capacity was not enough, so it was decided to re-equip the complex. Now "Majdanek" had to accommodate up to 250 thousand Soviet prisoners, the number of which was constantly growing. However, Kammler's calculations were not destined to come true. The Majdanek concentration camp was expanded by another 20 thousand places, and after that its construction was suspended.
About two thousand Soviet prisoners took part in the creation of new barracks, of which one and a half thousand died by November due to terrible working and living conditions. That is, only five hundred people survived, of which about 30% were already disabled. In December, another 150 Jews joined the construction site, but immediately after that, a typhus epidemic broke out here, and a month later it claimed the lives of everyone who participated in the construction of the camp.
Camp structure
The area of the camp was 95 hectares. Its entire territory was divided into five sections, one of which was exclusively for women. The complex consisted of many buildings, among which were 227 workshops, factory and production, 22 barracks for prisoners of war and 2 administrative ones. In addition, "Majdanek" had ten branches, for example, "Plaszow", "Travniki", "Grubeshok" and others. The prisoners of the camp were engaged in the productionuniforms and weapons in factories.
Prisoners
This concentration camp in Poland, only according to official data, became a temporary shelter for 300 thousand prisoners of war, of which about 40% were Jews, and 35% were Poles. Among the rest of the prisoners there were many Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. On the territory of this camp, about 80 thousand people were brutally killed, three-quarters of whom were Jews. According to other sources, one and a half million prisoners lived on the territory of Majdanek, and the number of victims reached 360 thousand people.
By the time this concentration camp was created, it was supposed to accommodate about 50 thousand prisoners, and in 1942 its capacity increased five times. He had ten branches and his own production. Prisoners were exterminated starting in April 1942. The “instrument” of death was Zyklon B gas, which was also used in Auschwitz. And in September 1943, the crematorium was launched.
Erntefest
A lot of evidence and documentation remains about the concentration camps, but it is impossible to depict on paper how brutal Operation Erntefest, carried out in early November 1943, became. Translated from German, this word means "harvest festival", quite ironic, considering what happened. In just two days, on November 3 and 4, the SS police destroyed all the Jews of the Lublin region, who were imprisoned in the concentration camps "Travniki", "Ponyatov" and "Majdanek". According to various sources, in general, from 40 to 43 thousand people were killed.
Thiswas a terrible massacre. The prisoners were forced to dig trenches on their own, located near the camp. The length of one such ditch reached 100 meters, width 6, and depth 3 meters. On the morning of November 3, the Jews of Majdanek and all nearby camps were led to these trenches. The prisoners were divided into groups, ordered to lie down near the ditches in such a way that the next prisoner would lay his head on the back of the previous one. About a hundred German SS representatives killed all these Jews with a shot in the back of the head, passing along the rows. All fascist concentration camps used the most severe measures for their prisoners, but these executions were simply inhuman. So the corpses ended up in the trench in layers, one after the other. The SS men repeated the massacre until the entire moat was filled. During the shooting, music was played to drown out the shots. When all the ditches were already filled with corpses, they were covered with a small layer of earth, and then cremated.
Murders
Some scientists believe that the Majdanek concentration camp was originally supposed to accommodate only Soviet prisoners of war. Although there is no documentary evidence for this version. Mass killings began here a year after construction was completed, and in 1943 this place had already become an official death camp. Here, with the exception of Operation Erntefest, gas chambers were predominantly used. For poisoning, carbon monoxide was first used, and later Zyklon B.
Camp Liberation
In 1944, Soviet troops managed to liberate Majdanek. concentration camp, photowhich once again proves the heartlessness of the SS troops, was instantly abandoned by the Germans, who, although they tried to hide evidence of massacres, could not do it. The Germans, who were then on the territory of the complex, tried to destroy the crematorium, which became the site of the murder of thousands of people, but they did not have time to do this, because they had to quickly leave this place. In the summer of the same year, the troops of the Soviet Union also managed to liberate the territories of several other death camps, such as Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec, which were disbanded in 1943.
Conclusion
At its core, fascist camps are no different. Their whole structure is contrary to humanism and the idea that all people are equal. There can be no "but" here. Although any problem can be looked at from different angles, but the extermination of people by the thousands cannot be justified by anything, even by the fact that it was a war.
A concentration camp is a phenomenon that existed not only because the Third Reich needed it, because it was not Hitler who personally launched gas into the chambers, the military, ruthless soldiers also took part in this. However, not everyone liked this situation, some were against it, but they had no choice, they were forced to remain cruel so that they would not be convicted of a traitor. The most humane of them even tried to help the prisoners, but this serves as an extremely weak justification for their actions. However, this cannot be said about high-ranking members of the SS, because it was they who deliberately sent tens of thousands to death in nothingguilty people, among whom were both women and children.
