Majdanek / Lublin concentration camp

Majdanek concentration camp

so many stories have come from this place which spans our knowledge of the holocaust 

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Hello and welcome to Peter Battlefield. This week we're back in Poland on the search of the Holocaust. We are going to visit Lublin and the Majdanic concentration camp as well as the castle. Now Lublin is in one of the deepest parts of Poland. However, the flights are very easy to get from the United Kingdom. When I flew out there, it was part of a larger trip, where I'd fly to Lublin, I'd do Wodj and then go on to Warsaw. And I did this as I wanted to visit the Middanic site, as there are so many different bits within the site that relate to the larger story of the Holocaust. As anyone who follows me on TikTok will see, I do a lot of videos about the Holocaust, and it's always met with opposition and other such things from Holocaust deniers and just generally those people who seem to be anti-Semitic. And people always mention about the same four things about the Holocaust, and they all think they relate solely to Auschwitz, such as the wooden doors, the Persian blue staining, and people being turned into soap. And the more I study the Holocaust and go to these different sites, and I've been to 20 different Holocaust sites, whether ghettos, concentration camps, or other prisons, in the past two years, and we can see there is some overlap. And obviously, as we're now 80 years since the end of the Second World War, and of course, after the Second World War, there'd be that period of the Cold War which communism wouldn't shut up until the early 90s, and then as the years have gone by, more and more information has become available. But then people's thoughts change all the time. But Majdanik would be involved heavily in the Nuremberg trials. It was liberated by the Russians because we were in the far east of Poland, but some of the stuff we see here relates to a lot of the other larger sites. But I digress. Lublin itself is a beautiful city. However, when I got off the train and I'd agreed to go and stay in an apartment, my Airbnb, with my local host, who asked me directly what time will I be there, and I said, Oh, I'll be there about quarter past four. And lo and behold, turned up a quarter past four, and like meeting some member of the French Resistance under a lamppost, I met my host. And we talked shortly, and he showed us the apartment, and he goes, What on earth are you doing in Lublin? Lublin is an industrial city, but it still has its old town and many of the major Polish cities, we can see how industry has built them, and as the industry was built, they wanted them to become those larger cities of culture and architecture. We think about Katowica, and if anyone does enjoy Poland and enjoys going to Krakow, try Katowica. It's an industrial city but has a lot of history from its past. But Majdanik and Lublin. This was I was there for two nights as I wanted to experience the Majdanic concentration camp and then travel on beyond. So Lublin, as I say, it's in the east of Poland, so as the war progressed, and then eventually Poland would be cut in half between the Nazis and the Russians, and then as the Germans pushed through into the east, Lublin would be taken and the Maidanic concentration camp would come into effect. The camp started in October 1941 and would run until July 1944, quite possibly one of the first to be liberated by the Russians. However, there isn't that much information because of course many people think back to the January to April period of 1945 when many of the concentration camps were being liberated from the West. The camp was designated solely for Poles and Jews, and eventually it'd be used also to hold Soviet prisoners. Luban had a large Jewish population, and the old Jewish quarter, which is the old town that you go to today, was used to hold as a ghetto. Now, quite often when you go to concentration camps, they very much often have hand in hand the concentration camp, the work camp, and a Gestapo prison. Here it's slightly different, we have the main concentration camp, but Lublin Castle will be taken over and almost be an extension of the concentration camp system. Here the SS and the Gestapo would torture and interview prisoners before sending them on their way. So what I'd recommend you do is there is a bus that can get you to Lublin, but bolts are very cheap out there, so if you're staying in Lublin itself, take the bus or take a taxi out to Majdanik, and you're greeted by this massive visitor centre, which is completely free to visit, and all these concentration camps are. Most of them are run by the Polish government, and quite often I get a lot of people when I can't when people are asking me about Auschwitz, which you do have to have a dedicated tour to go around, unless you travel just in the afternoon, and this is because of the sheer interest in it. And people often go, Why on earth are we charging you being charged to go there? You can go there completely free if you go after a certain time. However, you do have to pay guides and wages, and we need to keep the upkeep of these sites for future generations. But Lublin, you can buy yourself a map from the uh from the information spot, and it will cost you no more than 50 pence, and it gives you an insight into the actual site. So we walk along the long walk where many people would have walked along over its time, past the medical centre, and then we enter the main part of the camp. The camp would start off being used for forced labour before being turned into an extermination camp. As you go through the first set of gates, you're greeted with some fairly substantial buildings. These are made of concrete, and this was the area where prisoners would be sorted. If we think of Auschwitz, we have the sorting ramp, but here they would be marched in. They're then sorted into the different categories and groups, and as you walk through the first building, it is a decontamination room where people could get a shower, and then they'd move along. For other categories of prisoners, they'd then be moved into the gas chambers. Now these doors are metal, as a lot of people try to talk about the Auschwitz ones, which are made of wood. And on the back wall there is blue staining. Now I can't confirm or deny whether this is the Persian blue, whether this is staining from the Zyklon B. But it was used in the trial at the time. To the left hand side of it you'll see some gas canisters, and these were added later on, which represent when carbon monoxide was used as part of the killing process. We then leave and you see parts of the museum, and then you're greeted by an entire line of huts, which are all dedicated to the different categories of prisoners, whether Poles, Sinthes, Romans, or Jews or Soviet prisoners. Then halfway along on the left hand side there's a museum, and this holds many of the relics of the site, and what's particularly interesting when you get in there is the statue of a tortoise. This came from the Polish camp. These were the local Poles who were forced into labour, political prisoners intelligentsia, and they were held in a separate part of the camp. And all the way through the site you'll see different parts of artwork which were created by those Polish prisoners at the time. We have the turtle, which is symbolistic to show the defiance against Nazism. We may work, but we will work slow. Then when you go into the next Polish part of the site, you'll see a castle inside a glass display. Apparently, the artists' names are rolled up into a piece of paper and put into the concrete on the bottom. This can be never neither confirmed nor denied, but then on the camp there is a large spire. This tower or column was created by the Poles, and this will be one of the first memorials on this site. And apparently the ashes of the victims are built into the base of it. The camp would obviously be destroyed in the post-war period. These wooden huts didn't really exist for the period after the war, but it has been rebuilt. The crematorium was also burnt down, but today it's been rebuilt and the original creme um crematoriums, the original ovens are still standing there. There is a little greenhouse at the end of that first row that we've just come from from that museum. Have a little look at it. It's part of the original road of the camp, and if you look really closely, you can see that this is made out of graves from the local Jewish cemetery. The site is exceptionally long and large, but interesting by the same time. There's enough to see and read, maybe not quite understand, but it gives you an idea of the size and aspect of this site. You visit the crematorium, and then there is a larger memorial, the main memorial for the Maidanic site, however, sadly, it was being refurbed when I went there, so I couldn't go around it. So you walk back the full length of the site, and you get a when you stand up by the crematorium, look back to that information centre, and this isn't the full site, you get an idea of the scale and the numbers of people who would have been sent through here during the time of operation. The site was originally built to hold a quarter of a million Soviet prisoners in the March of 1942. However, with the expansion into the east, it wouldn't be used to its full potential. 150,000 inmates went through it, and it's estimated that 78,000 would be killed. Once you're finished with that, take a bus or a taxi back into Lublin and visit the old town. This was the former Jewish quarter and also the ghetto, and you can enjoy some fantastic food and fare just to decompress after your visit to the concentration camp, and then take yourself away to Lublin Castle. This was where the Gestapo held many of the political prisoners and would talk to them. Today it's a museum about the history of Lublin and also an arts uh art gallery. There's not really much about the use of it as a concentration camp, apart from its Vather Impressive Tower, which is a lasting memorial. It's a long walk up to the top, but sadly it's all in Polish, but if you get your translator out you can listen and read about the information behind it, and that is right up in the top. And before you leave, make sure you go down to the basement. It lists the names of 350 people who were murdered at this concentration camp by the Scarpo through its time. This is only a a taster of what to do in Lublin, and I was only there for one for two for two nights before going on further. But just to think about other sites you can go and visit the Majdanic concentration camp and Lublin Castle, before travelling on your journey around Poland.