State Museum at Majdanek

Państwowe Muzeum na Majdanku

The Majdanek concentration camp was in operation on the south-eastern outskirts of Lublin between autumn 1941 and July 1944. Both Jewish and non-Jewish prisoners were held here and deployed in forced labour, shot and, since autumn 1942, murdered in gas chambers. The memorial, which was established on the former camp premises after the war, was one of the first memorials in Europe to honour the victims of National Socialist crimes at the historic site.

History

The Majdanek concentration camp was established in the Majdanek district of Lublin by order of Heinrich Himmler in autumn 1941. It was officially designated as a »Prisoner of War Camp of the Waffen SS in Lublin«. After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the camp was to become a production site for the SS.
In the approximately 30 months of its existence, the »Lublin concentration camp«, as it was officially called from February 1943 on, fulfilled various functions and was subordinate to different entities within the National Socialist concentration camp system. The SS used it as a forced labour camp and partially as an extermination and transit camp. Between 1941 and 1944, there were 270 »labour commandos« at Majdanek, whose main task it was to expand the camp. From autumn 1942 on - after Odilo Globocnik, SS and police leader in the Lublin District, had issued an order to include Majdanek in »Aktion Reinhardt«, an operation aimed at murdering the Jews in the General Government - Jews were also deported to the camp for extermination. From that point on, Jews were murdered at Majdanek in gas chambers, similar to the death camps at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka.
Between the end of 1943 and the liberation by the Soviets in July 1944, only few Jews were deported to Majdanek. The prisoners were temporarily held there prior to being sent to various camps in the Reich. While the Red Army was advancing, the camp authorities tried to erase all traces of the mass murders. Prisoners were forced to open mass graves and burn the rotting corpses. Shortly before the camp's liquidation, several buildings were set on fire, yet when the Soviet troops arrived, they found most of the camp intact.

Lublin, June 24, 1944, Aerial photo of the camp at Majdanek, Państwowe Muzeum na Majdanku

Lublin, 1944, Gas chambers at Majdanek, photo taken a few days after the camp's liberation, Państwowe Muzeum na Majdanku

Victims

At first, all of the prisoners at Majdanek were men; from October 1942, there was a separate section designated for women. The backbreaking work, insufficient nutrition and catastrophic hygienic conditions caused many prisoners to die within a short time of their arrival at the camp. Prisoners no longer able to work were shot. In the winter of 1941 and in summer 1942, many prisoners who had fallen ill with typhus were shot by members of the camp SS in the nearby Krępiecki forest. Others were left to their own means, without supervision or care, at so-called death barracks.
The first victims to be murdered at the gas chambers, which were set up in autumn 1942, were ill prisoners, both Jews and non-Jews. When new transports arrived, predominantly Jewish children, elderly and ill people were murdered. Of the 15,000 Jews whom the SS deported from the Warsaw Ghetto to Majdanek in April and May 1943, 4,000 to 5,000 were asphyxiated by carbon monoxide or Zyklon B. The remaining Jews were selected for forced labour.
On November 3, 1943, members of the SS and police shot 18,000 Jews from the Lublin District, from Majdanek and other forced labour camps in an operation referred to as »Aktion Erntefest« (»Operation Harvest Festival«). The victims were shot in the back of the head or machine-gunned on the camp premises and in the Krępiecki forest while music played in the background.
Lacking documentation makes it impossible to precisely trace how many prisoners were held at Majdanek and how many were murdered. According to the latest research, at least 78,000 perished at Majdanek - about 60,000 of them were Jews. Poles and Belarusians were the largest national groups among the non-Jewish victims.

The Second World War began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland and the occupation of the west of the country by German troops and the east of the country by the Red Army. Persecution and terror directly followed the invasion in both parts of the country. German units massacred members of the intelligentsia, Jewish and non-Jewish civilians as well as hospital patients. At the end of 1939 the German administration established ghettos where the Jewish population was forced to live in cramped and horrendous conditions. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, eastern Poland also fell under German control. SS Einsatzgruppen started to systematically murder Jewish men, later also women and children. In autumn 1941, local German authorities in the former west of the country began to prepare for the mass murder of Jewish ghetto prisoners using poison gas. By 1945, some three million Polish Jews had been murdered in the extermination camps at Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek or Auschwitz, starved to death in the ghettos or shot dead. In 1943 the Jews living in the Warsaw ghetto staged an uprising, which was brutally crushed by the SS. Polish soldiers fought with the Allies on all fronts during the Second World War. Polish partisan groups, including the patriotic »Armia Krajowa« (Home Army), formed the largest resistance movement in occupied Europe. August 1, 1944 saw the start of the Warsaw Uprising, the most extensive civilian campaign against the Germans in occupied Europe. It failed also because the Red Army, already standing on the opposite side of the Vistula River, chose not to intervene. It is estimated that up to 250,000 people lost their lives in the uprising. A total of around three million non-Jewish Poles met a violent death during the German occupation. Once the Red Army had arrived on (East) Polish soil in January 1944, the troops of the Armia Krajowa were stripped of their weapons by the Soviet secret service and the officers were either shot or deported. The millions of deaths during the occupation, the permanent Soviet annexation of eastern Poland, the incorporation of former eastern German territories and the ensuing population transfers all left a traumatic political and social legacy in Poland. Remembrance of the murder of European Jews in German extermination camps was initially marginalised in the Polish culture of memory. Although Auschwitz soon became an international symbol of the Holocaust, in Poland it was viewed for decades above all as a »site of Polish martyrdom«. However, the start of the 21st century brought about changes in this respect, due in part to the fierce debates over the Jedwabne massacre in eastern Poland. The massacre of around 340 Jews on July 10, 1941 was originally attributed to the »Gestapo and Hitler police« but had in fact been carried out by Polish »neighbours« without orders from the Germans. Debates in Poland and abroad on Polish perpetration resulted in the Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski (*1954) issuing an apology to the victims in 2001. There were increasing calls from experts, such as those from Poland’s Institute for National Remembrance, for the country to confront the most difficult chapters in its history, which also include the anti-Jewish pogroms in 1946-47 and state anti-semitism in communist Poland during the post-war period. The Polish invests extensively in memorial culture, including grand projects with international ambition. The Warsaw Rising Museum was opened already in 2004. The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews was opened in 2013 on the territory of the former Warsaw Ghetto, a new museum dedicated specifically to the Warsaw Ghetto will follow suit in 2024. Since 2017, there is a major Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. Since the turn of the millennium, the sites of the former German extermination camps have also been converted into modern memorial sites. An ever-growing preoccupation with Poland’s Jewish and multicultural heritage can be observed in the field of culture as well.

Remembrance

On July 24, 1944, Soviet and Polish soldiers reached the camp at Majdanek, which had been abandoned two days earlier. Most of the camp was re-purposed to barracks for the military, and soon several of the remaining buildings were torn down. The local population participated in the demolition and reused the wood as construction material. Shortly after the camp's liberation, a Soviet-Polish commission was established to investigate the history of the camp. The commission's investigations led them to conclude that 1.5 million had perished at Majdanek. Already in November 1944, the »State Museum at Majdanek« was founded, becoming the first concentration camp memorial. When the military left the area in 1949, the museum took over the entire camp premises. In 1962, a permanent exhibition, strongly centred around the communist state propaganda, was opened.
On September 1, 1969, the »Memorial to Struggle and Martyrdom« by Wiktor Tołkin and Jerzy Dembek was dedicated; until today, it towers over the memorial complex. The »Path of Honour and Martyrdom« leads through the middle of the camp premises and connects the monument with a the domed mausoleum, where the victims' ashes are stored.
Today, the museum comprises a total of 70 original buildings. Visitors can moreover see partly reconstructed crematoriums and gas chambers. A new permanent exhibition was opened in 1996.

Lublin, 2009, View of the former camp's premises, Thorbjörn Hoverberg

Lublin, undated, Ashes in the mausoleum, Ronnie Golz

Possibilities

Permanent exhibition, guided tours, history workshops, youth meetings, library, archive, special exhibitions, publications

Open

Premises: Apr. to Oct. 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Nov. to Mar. 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., closed on Nov. 1
Exhibition, installation: Apr. to Oct. 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed Nov. to Mar. and on public holidays
Visitor Service: Apr. to Oct. 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Nov. to Mar. 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., closed on Mondays and holidays

Contact

http://www.majdanek.eu

centrum@majdanek.pl

+48 (0)8171 028 33

ul. Droga Męczenników Majdanka 67
20-325 Lublin

Lublin, 2009, Barbed wire and watchtower, Thorbjörn Hoverberg

Lublin, 2009, Barracks with shoes, Thorbjörn Hoverberg

Lublin, 2009, Crematorium, Thorbjörn Hoverberg

Lublin, 2009, The 1969 memorial, Thorbjörn Hoverberg

Lublin, 2026, Watchtower on the former camp premises, Stiftung Denkmal

Lublin, 2026, Interior view of a gas chamber, Stiftung Denkmal

Lublin, undated, The path connecting the memorial and the mausoleum, Ronnie Golz

Lublin, 2026, Mausoleum, Stiftung Denkmal

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