1. Majdanek Concentration Camp: Atrocities/Horrors By Jane Meng

2. About The Camp Majdanek is located within the boundaries of Lublin, Poland, a major city. It was one of the only camps in Poland not built in a remote rural area. Originally constructed as a forced-labor camp, it then turned into an extermination camp during Operation Reinhard, a German plan to kill all Jews that lived in the General Government of Poland. The camp, operating from October 1, 1941 to July 22, 1944, was seized almost intact. This is because the Soviet Red Army averted the Schutzstaffel from demolishing all of it’s substructure and commandant Anton Thernes failed in removing evidence of war crimes. To this day, Majdanek still remains the best preserved concentration camp from the Holocaust.

3. Arriving at the Camp First, the inmates would be stripped naked of all their clothing. Then they would get all their body hair shaved off with tough razors that often led to cuts. Afterwards, they would get Lysol poured over them to disinfect them, most of the time irritating and stinging the razor cuts. When the Lysol was finished they would get bathed in water that switched from boiling hot to freezing cold. Following this, they were then issued thin striped pajamas and given an ID number to replace their name. If an inmate looked to weak, too old, or too young to work, they would immediately get shot or sent to the gas chambers.

4. Food in the Camp The prisoners were given very rationed food, barely enough to keep them alive. Food grown in the camp gardens were used to make watery soups that would be served for lunch every day. Sometimes they would get a slice of bread, but most of the time it would be moldy, rotten, or would have bugs in it. The prisoners would intake an average of only 1000 calories a day, but with the harsh amounts of work they had to do, it was not even near what they needed.

5. Life in the Camp Prisoners would get called out of bed at five in the morning. They would attend roll call, go to work, attend another roll call near lunch time, go back to work, and come back to the barracks to eat dinner. If someone was missing during roll call and found later, they would be whipped 200 times in the center of the roll call yard. At night when the prisoners would be eating dinner, the SS men would party, drink, and gamble in front of them. This was so if the SS men were drunk or lost money gambling, they could beat, harass, or murder the prisoners.

6. Death in the Camp Many people were killed when they first entered Majdanek just because they were too weak to work. Others got killed later because they slowly became weaker, and their overseers didn’t think they were useful anymore. Some died because of hunger, cold, and illness. Sonderkommandos, people who burnt dead bodies, would sometimes get killed even if they weren’t weak just so they wouldn’t be able to share the stories incase liberation came. Most people got killed in gas chambers that were filled with Zyklon-B gas. Sometimes SS men had mass shooting operations.

7. Deaths in Majdanek By the time Majdanek was liberated, 78,000 prisoners were already killed. On November 3, 1943, there was a massacre that took place in Majdanek, killing over 18,000 Jews in just one day. This massacre was the largest single day, single location killing during the entire Holocaust.