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| Nazi Gas chamber at Majdanek concentration camp in Lublin, Poland. |
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Gas Chamber
Wikipedia
Majdanek (or Lublin) was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, and some 227 structures in all, placing it among the largest of Nazi-run concentration camps.
Although initially intended for forced labor rather than extermination, the camp was used to kill people on an industrial scale during Operation Reinhard, the German plan to murder all Jews within their own General Government territory of Poland.
The camp, which operated from October 1, 1941, until July 22, 1944, was captured nearly intact, because the rapid advance of the Soviet Red Army during Operation Bagration prevented the SS from destroying most of its infrastructure, and the inept Deputy Camp Commandant Anton Thernes failed in his task of removing incriminating evidence of war crimes.
The camp was nicknamed Majdanek ("little Majdan") by local people in 1941 because it was adjacent to the Lublin suburb of Majdan Tatarski. The Nazi documents initially called the site a Prisoner of War Camp of the Waffen-SS in Lublin based on how it was funded and operated. It was renamed by Reich Main Security Office in Berlin as Konzentrationslager Lublin on April 9, 1943, but the local Polish name is usually still used.
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