Majdanek

Majdanek became a ghetto after the invasion of Poland in 1939.  It then became a POW camp.  After the Wannsee Conference, Majdanek became an add-on death camp.  That's why the gas chambers were located in the front of the camp.

Unlike Auschwitz, the Nazis did not have time to destroy the gas chambers and crematoria.   I actually got to enter them.

The camp was also not built away from prying eyes.  It could easily be reached by car, and all sides of the camp were exposed as no trees surrounded it.  Even the crematoria and gas chambers were visible from the outside, so claims to "not have known" by the locals are ludicrous and impossible!

Newly arriving Jews were tricked once again into believing that their fate was okay.  They had every reason to believe they would work, as people were walking around everywhere.  The barracks were falsely labeled as Bath and Disinfection Centers, so as new visitors they wouldn't suspect they were going to DIE!

Majdanek was captured whole in July 1944. Unlike what happened in Auschwitz, the Nazis had no time to evacuate the camp or to burn it and destroy the evidence. The story of Majdanek was featured on the front page of the New York Times, then as now, the most prestigious of American newspapers.
H.W. Lawrence, a correspondent for the New York Times, wrote: “I have just seen the most terrible place on earth.” These revelations were not given much credence. The very existence of something as awful as a death camp seemed impossible. Even graphic films of the camp shown in Britain and the United States were dismissed as Soviet propaganda.
Because it was captured whole,  Majdanek is more primitive, more actual, and more real.

 Look how deceitful the Nazis were.  They labeled the barrack Bath and Disinfection.  They told the victims that "Now a better life for you will begin.  You just need to be ready to work hard.  Your hair will be cut because of lice so you need to get disinfected."  They were SHAMED to get NAKED in front of everyone!  Jewish people were taught to be very modest, even in front of their families.  When you are naked, there is no resistance.  Notice how the construction of the barracks changed.....It went from wooden planks to bricks.  The brick building was the gas chamber. When I walked through the crematoria, it still smelled of burning charcoal after 70 YEARS!

Click on pictures to read in detail the process of death and deception. 

Deceptive showers.  The prisoners were told to get naked and to REMEMBER where they put their belongings....Really?  In a room with 3,000 people?  But they did their best....not knowing that they would never come back to this room to retrieve their possessions.  They were gassed in the next room.

Carbon monoxide was supplied through metal pipes connected with two steel cylinders. 

Zyklon B was also used here.  The remnants from the poisonous Zyklon B stained the walls blue.

This is the peep hole the Nazis looked through to make sure all were dead. 

To make pavements, the Jews would roll the heavy barrels...Guess what they made the pavements from....Headstones from Jewish cemeteries. 

This was the place of roll call.  Remember, before Majdanek was a death camp, it was a POW camp.  So Polish "prisoners" asked to make their place nicer.  Germans didn't suspect a thing and were trying to be "nicer" because they needed them to work.  What the Polish "prisoners" did was erect a statue.  The base of the column is made from ashes.  The eagle became a symbol of freedom, the turtle became a message to work SLOW, and the lizard cautioned them to be smart. 

There were ravens and crows everywhere.....I think they smelled the death.

 Largest massacre of Jews in one day....30.000 people were buried in these pits.

Dome memorial.....translated to "Let our Fate be a Warning to You."

Largest massacre of Jews in one day.....30,000 people were buried in these pits. 

Underneath the dome are preserved ashes from the bodies.  Close up, you could even see bone fragments. I tried to capture the perspective of how much ash there was.....Look at the person in the background and how small he looks compared to the mountain of ash!

 OMG!  When we went to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC, we were nauseated by the smell of shoes in a small area.  Look at all the shoes here.  The following poem says it all: 

Shoes
Visitors would walk through a barracks of shoes, the shoes of 500,000 Jews from the various ghettos and camps, who entered but did not leave.

Moshe Shulstein, the great Yiddish poet wrote of these shoes:


I saw a mountain
Higher than Mt. Blanc
And more Holy that the Mountain of Sinai
On this world this mountain stood.
such a mountain I saw—Jewish shoes in Majdanek….
Hear! hear the march.
Hear the shuffle of shoes left behind—that which remained.
From small, from large, from each and every one.
Make ways for the rows—for the pairs—
For the generations—for the years.
The shoe army—it moves and moves.
We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses.
We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers,
From Prague, Paris and Amsterdam,
And because we are only made of stuff and leather
And not of blood and flesh, each one of us avoided the hellfire.
We shoes—that used to go strolling in the market
Or with the bride and groom to the chuppah
We shoes from simple Jews, from butchers and carpenters,
From crocheted booties of babies just beginning to walk and go On happy occasions, weddings and even until the time
Of giving birth, to a dance, to exciting places of life…
Or quietly—to a funeral.
Unceasingly we go. We tramp.
The hangman never had a chance to snatch us into his
Sack of loot—now we go to him.
Let everyone hear the steps which flow as tears.
The steps that measure out the judgment.