Majdanek concentration camp

We visited the Majdanek concentration camp today.  It was cold, rainy, and gloomy - It made it very easy to imagine how miserable the 150,000 poor souls were who passed through the camp from October 1941 to July 1944 when the Germans abandoned it with the Russian advance.  The site is huge (1 square mile) and one of the only concentration camps that still has the original buildings in tact.

Guard tower at along the perimeter

Prisoners were stripped, showered, then disinfected in large concrete tubs of disinfectant. This is the men's bathhouse. 

Prisoners were sorted upon arrival based on their fitness to do labor.  Most women and children were killed upon arrival in the gas chambers.  They used carbon monoxide and another lethal gas.  There was a small peephole in the door where the guards could observe until all the people in the chamber were dead.

After the disinfection process, prisoners were put into bunkhouses. They were designed to hold approximately 250 people, but often held up to 500.

 There were two small stoves at either end of the bunkhouse.  Each day prisoners were marshalled in the yard for roll call (sometimes lasting several hours) before being marched to their labor sites for the day.  They were served one meal, consuming barely 900 calories a day (estimates are that the body needs 3500 calories a day to survive hard labor).

This is a picture of bins full of shoes.  These shoes were taken from dead prisoners and shipped to Germany for distribution, or for reusing the materials for other purposes.  The 40,000 pairs of shoes displayed here were what was left behind when the Nazis abandoned the camp.

After prisoners died, or were executed, their bodies were cremated. The heat from the ovens was used to heat water in the camp for the 20 SS officers and 1000 guards.  The ashes were used to fertilize local fields, and were also dumped in a huge pile at the end of the camp.  The round structure below is a memorial built over the remaining ashes.

The inscription reads "Let our fate be a warning to you".

This last monument (below) stands at the entrance to the camp.  It is called the Monument to Struggle and Martyrdom who shape refers to the symbolic Hell's Gate from Dante's Divine comedy.

About 60,000 Jews and 20,000 people of other nationalities (the majority of which were Polish), were killed at Majdanek.  It was a relatively small operation compared to Aushewitz and others.