Majdanek Concentration Camp and the Forced-Labor Camps in Lublin

By the autumn of 1943, Lublin—the capital of the district bearing the same name—was the last major center in the General Government in which Jews were still held in significant numbers. After the final liquidation of the city’s ghetto in November 1942, about 18,500 Jewish men and women remained imprisoned in a network of forced-labor camps scattered across the city. These prisoners worked for the Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke (DAW, “German Equipment Works”) and the SS-owned company Osti (Ostindustrie GmbH). They were also forced to serve the offices of the Commander of the Security Police (KdS), the SS and Police Leader (SSPF), and the private needs of German occupiers. Conditions in these camps were brutal and were characterized by exploitation, beatings, random killings, and starvation.

Before Operation Reinhard

The Lipowa Street Camp. Located beside a Catholic cemetery, the camp at Lipowa Street 7 began in 1939 as an assembly point for Jewish labor detachments. Soon, workshops such as a roofing plant, an auto repair shop, a tailoring workshop and a carpentry workshop were built. Initially, workers could return to their families in the ghetto, but gradually barracks were erected, and they became fully imprisoned. In late 1940 and early 1941, the camp expanded drastically with the arrival of about 2,000 Jewish prisoners of war from the Polish Army, who became the main labor force.

The “Old Airfield” Complex. On the site of the former Polish aircraft factory on Wrońska Street, several forced-labor camps operated side by side. The largest was established in late summer 1941 as the “SS Fur and Clothing Works.”

Majdanek. Established in October 1941, the Lublin concentration camp—later known as Majdanek—was initially planned as a POW camp for Soviet soldiers. It soon became part of Globocnik’s apparatus of repression and Germanization, serving both as a reservoir of Jewish slave labor and a killing site.

During Operation Reinhard

The Lipowa Street Camp. After the liquidation of the Lublin Old Town Ghetto in April 1942, even the remaining skilled Jewish workers were confined to the camp. The workshops were integrated into the DAW as “Werk I,” though the camp itself remained under the authority of SSPF Odilo Globocnik. Members of the local Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz initially guarded the camp; later, Trawniki auxiliaries took over. Around 2,500 prisoners were held there by late 1943, working under inhumane conditions while German officials commissioned both official and private work from them.

The “Old Airfield” Complex. From March 1942, after the start of Operation Reinhard, mostly Jewish women were forced at the “SS Fur and Clothing Works” to clean, sort, and package the clothing of murdered Jews from extermination camps, which was then sent to German recipients. The enormous quantity of looted goods filled entire hangars. Georg Wippern, head of the SS garrison administration, later recalled: “The amount was so large that mountains of clothing were piled up and even the aircraft halls could not contain them.” In 1943, Christian Wirth—previously commandant of Bełżec—reorganized the site as the “SS Garrison Administration Old Goods Utilization Depot Lublin.” He introduced a system of privileges to push productivity, connected the camp to water and sewage, and slightly improved conditions. Its scale was immense. By late 1943, 1,901 railcars loaded with stolen clothing had been dispatched westward.

Alongside this “recycling” facility, the DAW opened its Werk II with additional workshops, including carpentry, metalwork, and vehicle repair. By late 1943, up to 12,500 men and women labored there. The Osti company later absorbed most of these workshops, expanding production to include brushes, iron goods, and materials for the Wehrmacht. The “Old Airfield” was also a key railway junction. It received transports of Jews from across Europe—Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Lithuania, and Poland—many of whom were then selected either for forced labor in the Lublin and Kraków districts or for immediate deportation to Sobibór or Majdanek. By late 1943, between 8,000 and 10,000 mostly Jewish prisoners were interned or employed across the site.

Majdanek. From March 1942, thousands of Jews from regional ghettos and entire transports from Slovakia arrived at Majdanek. The deadly construction work claimed most within weeks. Women were first brought in that autumn. After large transports from Warsaw and Białystok in spring 1943, the camp population peaked at around 25,000—more than half of whom were Jews.

Majdanek became directly involved in mass murder as part of Operation Reinhard in late 1942. A gas chamber, completed in October, was used to kill sick and “unfit” prisoners with carbon monoxide. Those previously selected for death had been shot in nearby woods. Regular selections on the camp fields weeded out those who were exhausted or injured. Women with children were also sent directly to the gas chamber upon arrival. It is estimated that about 60,000 Jews were murdered in Majdanek. By late 1943, around 8,000—one-third of them women—remained, mainly Polish, Slovak, and Greek Jews. A separate group of about 750 Czech Jews worked for Osti in basketry and brush workshops.

By late 1943, Lublin’s network of forced-labor sites—Lipowa, the Old Airfield, the Sportplatz, the Castle Prison, and Majdanek—formed a single system of exploitation and destruction under the SS and Police Leader Odilo Globocnik.

After Operation Reinhard

What began as “useful labor” ended in annihilation: in the mass shootings of Operation “Harvest Festival” [Aktion Erntefest] on November 3, 1943, the Jewish prisoners of Majdanek and the Lublin labor camps were murdered—approximately 18,000 at Majdanek alone in a single day, the largest single-day shooting massacre of the Holocaust. Afterward, only isolated groups of Jewish prisoners were still brought to Majdanek, and the coordinated exploitation and systematic murder of Jewish laborers largely ceased.

Majdanek itself continued to operate as a concentration camp until the summer of 1944. As the Red Army approached, the SS evacuated most surviving prisoners westward and attempted to destroy parts of the camp, but retreated too quickly to conceal the evidence. On July 23, 1944, Soviet forces liberated Majdanek largely intact—the first major Nazi camp to be captured—and its gas chambers, crematorium, and warehouses of victims’ belongings provided the world with early, undeniable proof of the crimes. A Soviet-Polish investigative commission documented the site within weeks, and in November 1944 a museum was established on the grounds, among the first memorial museums of the Holocaust. Trials of Majdanek personnel began in Lublin in late 1944 and continued for decades, most extensively in the Düsseldorf Majdanek trial of 1975–1981.