Remembering the liberation of Majdanek concentration camp 78 years ago

FP Staff • July 24, 2022, 17:58:09 IST

Majdanek was liberated in late July by the Red Army and it was the first major concentration camp to be liberated. It is believed that from 1941 to 1944 between 95,000 and 130,000 people, mostly Jews, had been murdered at the camp

Majdanek was a Nazi concentration camp run by the Waffen-SS established near the city of Lublin in Poland in September 1941. From October 1941, it began accepting prisoners, most of whom were Polish and other European Jews as well as Soviet prisoners of war. Here, a pile of human bones and skulls is seen in 1944 at the Majdanek concentration camp. AFP File

On the night of 22-23 July, 1944, Russian soldiers came upon Majdanek, the first of the Nazi camps to be liberated. They freed just under 500 prisoners and occupied the nearby city of Lublin on 24 July. These were some of the barracks where prisoners lived. Wikimedia Commons/ Roland Geider

Reconnaissance photograph of the Majdanek concentration camp taken on 24 June, 1944, from the collections of the Majdanek Museum. Wikimedia Commons/ Majdanek Museum

Prisoner card from the Majdanek concentration camp from January 1944. Wikimedia Commons/Radzuweit

The showers in Majdanek: The Jews were stripped of their clothes and belongings and then sent to the showers for a disinfection process before entering the gas chambers. Wikimedia Commons/ Lidan

In this gas chamber at Majdanek the prisioners were murdered with carbon monoxide. It took about 40 minutes to kill a person with carbon monoxide and only 10 with Zyklon B. Wikimedia Commons/Roland Geider

Those sent to Majdanek were subject to the worst forms of treatment, including starvation, forced labour, malnutrition and random executions. It was also used as an extermination camp, with gas chambers and two crematoriums. Here is a crematorium at the camp. Wikimedia Commons/ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Panstwowe Muzeum na Majdanku

Russian soldiers examine the ovens of the burned-down crematorium, following the camp’s liberation in 1944. Wikimedia Commons/ German photo library

Mrs Zofia from Aleksandrow burns a candle next to the ashes of the victims of the Majdanek Nazi death camp 23 July 2004 in Lublin during ceremonies commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the camp by the Red Army. AFP File