The Majdanek Concentration Camp. Fascist concentration camps

The Second World War, however, like the First, led to many deaths. However, not only soldiers and officers died, but also innocent people who simply did not approach the Aryan type of appearance, for whose purity the German dictator-tyrant Adolf Hitler fought so. Many people died in concentration camps at the hands of cruel executioners. One of the largest camps was called Majdanek, and it will be discussed.

Order

The Majdanek Concentration Camp was located in the suburb of Lublin, in Poland. He received his name from the Turkic word "square" (maidan). In fact, the construction of such camps began with the submission of Hitler, who instructed Heinrich Himmler, one of the top officials of the Third Reich, to establish total surveillance over the eastern territories captured by Germany.

On the same day, July 17, 1941, Himmler appointed one of the police chiefs Odilo Globocnik - responsible for creating the SS structure and concentration camps in the occupied territory of Poland. In addition, Globocnik was responsible for the partial Germanization of Poland. The central concentration camp on the eastern part of the occupied territory was the Majdanek concentration camp, located in the suburb of Lublin. The construction of the complex was to be carried out by the prisoners themselves.

The order on construction

The official order to create the camp was given on July 20, 1941. It was on this day that Himmler announced the order to Globochnik during his visit to Lublin. The decree stated that it was necessary to create a camp that would accommodate about 25-50 thousand people who, in turn, would be occupied with the construction of SS department buildings and the German police. In fact, the construction of the complex was entrusted to Hans Kammler, who occupied one of the leading positions in the management of the budget and construction of the SS. In September, he ordered to begin the creation of part of the concentration camp, which can accommodate at least 5 thousand people. However, some time later, an incredible number of prisoners of war were captured near Kiev, and Kammler changed his instructions, ordering the creation of two camps for prisoners of war - Majdanek and Auschwitz, designed for 50,000 people each.

Construction of camps

Initially, the first of the camps was built on the outskirts of the city of Lublin, near the cemetery. Not everyone liked this location, and civil authorities began to protest, after which Globocnik moved it to another territory, about 3 km from the city. After that, the first prisoners of concentration camps arrived here.

Expansion of the territory

In November, Kammler ordered the expansion of the camp, first up to 125,000 prisoners, and a month later - to 150. A few months later, and this capacity was not enough, so it was decided to re-equip the complex. Now Majdanek had to accommodate up to 250,000 Soviet prisoners, the number of which was constantly growing. However, Kammler's calculations did not come true. The Majdanek Concentration Camp was expanded by another 20,000 places, and after that its construction was suspended. In the creation of new barracks took part about two thousand Soviet prisoners, of which fifteen hundred died in November due to the terrible conditions of work and living. That is, only five hundred people remained alive, of which about 30% were already incapacitated. In December, a hundred and fifty Jews joined the construction site, but immediately after that a typhus epidemic broke out, and a month later it killed all those who participated in the construction of the camp.

Camp structure

The area of the camp was 95 hectares. Its entire territory was divided into five sections, one of which was exclusively for women. The complex consisted of a number of buildings, among which were 227 workshops, factory and production, 22 barracks for prisoners of war and 2 administrative. In addition, Majdanek had ten branches, for example, Plashuv, Travniki, Grubeshok and others. The prisoners of the camp were engaged in the production of uniforms and weapons in factories.

Prisoners

This concentration camp in Poland, only according to official data, became a temporary shelter for 300 thousand prisoners of war, of which about 40% were Jews and 35% were Poles. Among the remaining prisoners there were many Russians, Ukrainians and Byelorussians. On the territory of this camp, about 80,000 people were cruelly killed, three-quarters of whom were Jews. According to other sources, 1.5 million prisoners lived on the territory of the Majdanek, and the number of victims reached 360,000.

By the time of the creation of this concentration camp, it was supposed to accommodate about 50 thousand prisoners, and in 1942 its capacity increased fivefold. He had ten branches and his own production. The prisoners were destroyed, beginning in April 1942. The "weapon" of death was gas "Cyclone B", which was also used in "Auschwitz." And in September 1943 the crematorium was launched.

Erntefest

A lot of evidence and documentation remained about the concentration camps, but it is impossible to display on paper how cruel the Operation Erntefest, conducted in early November 1943, became. In German, this word means "harvesting holiday", very ironic, considering what happened. In just two days on November 3 and 4, the SS police destroyed all Jews of the Lublin district, who were imprisoned in the concentration camps of Travniki, Poniatov and Majdanek. According to various sources, in total, from 40 to 43 thousand people were killed.

This was a terrible mass murder. Prisoners were forced to dig trenches on their own, located near the camp. The length of one such ditch reached 100 meters, width 6, and depth 3 meters. On the morning of November 3, the Jews of the Majdanek and all the nearby camps were led to these trenches. The prisoners were divided into groups, ordered to lie down near the ditch in such a way that the next prisoner laid his head on the back of the previous one. About a hundred German SS representatives killed all these Jews with a shot in the back of the head, passing along the rows. All the fascist concentration camps used the most severe measures for their prisoners, but these executions were simply inhuman. So the corpses appeared in the trench layers, one after another. The SS members repeated the violence until the entire ditch was filled. During the shooting, music played to drown out shots. When all the ditches were already filled with corpses, they were covered with a small layer of earth, and then cremated.

Murder

Some scientists believe that the concentration camp "Majdanek" originally had to contain only Soviet prisoners of war. Although there is no documentary evidence for this version. Massacres began here a year after the end of construction, and in 1943 this place has already become the official death camp. Here, with the exception of Operation Erntefest, gas chambers were predominantly used. For poisoning, first carbon monoxide was used, and later "Cyclone B".

The liberation of the camp

In 1944, the Soviet troops managed to liberate the Majdanek. The Concentration Camp, a photo of which once again proves the heartlessness of the SS troops, was instantly abandoned by the Germans, who, although they tried to hide the evidence of the massacres, could not do this. The Germans who were then on the territory of the complex tried to destroy the crematorium, which became the site of the killing of thousands of people, but they did not have time to do it, because they had to quickly leave this place. In the summer of the same year, the troops of the Soviet Union managed to liberate also the territories of several other death camps, such as Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec, which were disbanded in 1943.

Conclusion

At their core, the fascist camps are no different. All of them are against the humanism and the idea that all people are equal. There can not be a "but" here. Although any problem can be viewed from different angles, the extermination of people by thousands can not be justified by anything, not even by the fact that it was a war. The Concentration Camp is a phenomenon that existed not only because it was necessary for the Third Reich, it was not Hitler who personally launched gas into the chambers, military and merciless soldiers took part in it. Nevertheless, not everyone liked this situation, some were against, but they had no choice, they had to remain cruel, so that they did not catch the traitor. The most human of them even tried to help the prisoners, but this serves as an extremely weak justification for their actions. However, high-ranking members of the SS can not say this, because they deliberately sent tens of thousands of innocent people to death, including women and children.