Tomasz Kranz: The Role of Majdanek Concentration Camp in the „Endlösung“

Majdanek concentration camp performed several functions in the Nazi policy towards the Jews. It served as a labour camp, a reservoir of forced labour, a transit camp, a place of plunder of Jewish belongings, and a site for executions and mass killings. The camp was subject to the SS-WVHA, but was also directly under the supervision of the SS and Police leader in the Lublin District, Odilo Globocnik who headed the “Operation Reinhardt” – the mass murder of Jews in the General Government in the period from spring 1942 until fall 1943. Selections of Jews and gassing operations took place at Majdanek upon his orders.

The deportations of Jews to Majdanek embraced the entire period of the camp’s existence – from the autumn of 1941 until the summer of 1944. The largest transports, however, arrived between April and June 1942, in October the same year, and during the period from April until August 1943. The most numerous group among the Jewish prisoners consisted of Polish Jews, mainly from the Lublin area and the Warsaw ghetto, and Slovak Jews.

With the example of Majdanek, the development of two opposing tendencies in the Nazi anti-Jewish policy can be observed: on the one hand the exploitation of Jewish workers within the framework of the SS industrial monopoly, while on the other the annihilation of the Jews.

Against the background of the large-scale genocide of the Jews, organized in an industrial way in Treblinka or Bełżec, the murder of Jewish prisoners in the Majdanek concentration camp appears rather as an extermination of a sort. It follows from this that the function of Majdanek as a place for mass killing was a kind of side-effect of Globocnik’s policy in relation to the Jews. Contrary to the other camps of ‘Operation Reinhardt’, the majority of Jewish inmates were brought to Majdanek not primarily for annihilation, but to be utilized as slave labour. Initially, they were employed at the construction of the camp and later engaged in the SS-enterprises and workshops connected with “Operation Reinhardt”, and finally they provided manpower for the forced labour camps controlled by Globocnik.

Gassing operations began at Majdanek in September/October 1942 and ceased early September 1943. They did not embrace all the Jews deported to the camp, but only those new arrivals and inmates who were found unfit for work, i.e. first of all children and older people. This procedure resulted from the fact that, both for Globocnik and the SS-WVHA, Majdanek served in the first place as a workforce reservoir and a part of the economic base of “Operation Reinhardt”.

In effect, as a centre of mass murder, Majdanek never achieved a scale comparable with other “Operation Reinhardt” camps, which is evident from the number of victims. It has been estimated that some 60,000 Jews perished here as a result of the harsh living conditions, gassings and shootings. About one quarter of these victims were shot on one day – on November 3, 1943 – during the so-called “Operation Erntefest”.

In the history of the Shoah, Majdanek is a place of special significance at least for two reasons: One of the largest executions during World War II was carried out here, and here are preserved the gas chambers that constitute a unique relic on a worldwide scale.