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Majdanek
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 three gas chambers, two wooden gallows, and some 227 structures in all, placing it among the largest of Nazi concentration camps. Although initially intended for forced labor rather than extermination, it was used to murder people an estimated 78,000 people during Operation Reinhard, the German plan to murder all Polish Jews within their own occupied homeland. In operation from 1 October 1941 to 22 July 1944, it was captured nearly intact. The rapid advance of the Soviet Red Army during Operation Bagration prevented the SS from destroying most of its infrastructure, and Deputy Camp Commandant Anton Thernes failed to remove the most incriminating evidence of war crimes. The camp was nicknamed Majdanek ("little Majdan") in 1941 by local residents, as it was adjacent to the L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Majdanek State Museum
The Majdanek State Museum () is a memorial museum and education centre founded in the fall of 1944 on the grounds of the Nazi Germany Majdanek death camp located in Lublin, Poland. It was the first museum of its kind in the world, devoted entirely to the memory of atrocities committed in the network of concentration, slave-labor, and extermination camps and subcamps of ''KL Lublin'' during World War II. The museum performs several tasks including scholarly research into the Holocaust in Poland. It houses a permanent collection of rare artifacts, archival photographs, and testimony. Site After the camp's liberation by the advancing Red Army on 23 July 1944, the site was formally protected. With the war still ongoing, it was preserved as a museum by the autumn of 1944. It remains one the best examples of a Nazi death camp, with largely intact gas chambers and crematoria. The camp became a state monument of martyrology by the 1947 decree of the Polish Parliament (Sejm). In the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anton Thernes
Anton Thernes (8 February 1892 – 3 December 1944) was a Nazi German war criminal, deputy commandant of administration at the notorious Majdanek concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland in World War II. He was tried at the Majdanek Trials and executed on 3 December 1944, along with five other war criminals, near the gas chambers and the Majdanek crematorium. War crimes Thernes was married and had six children in Trier before the Nazi German invasion of Poland. A member of the SS, Thernes served as the last administrative chief of KL Lublin / Majdanek. He was also in charge of food and slave labour administration, starvation rationing, and the maintenance of camp structures including the storage depot for property and valuables stolen from the Holocaust victims at the killing centers in Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka.. Thernes was given the task of destroying the evidence of crimes against humanity and genocide, but ran out of time due to his ineptitude and le ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extermination Camp
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe, primarily in occupied Poland, during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The victims of death camps were primarily murdered by gassing, either in permanent installations constructed for this specific purpose, or by means of gas vans. The six extermination camps were Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Extermination through labour was also used at the Auschwitz and Majdanek death camps. Millions were also murdered in concentration camps, in the Aktion T4, or directly on site. Additionally, camps operated by Nazi allies have also been described as extermination or death camps, most notably the Jasenovac concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia. The National Socialists made no secret of the existence of concentration camps as early as 1933, as they serv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operation Reinhard
Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt ( or ; also or ) was the codename of the secret Nazi Germany, German plan in World War II to exterminate History of the Jews in Poland, Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied Poland. This deadliest phase of the Holocaust was marked by the introduction of extermination camps. The operation proceeded from March 1942 to November 1943; about 1.47 million or more Jews were murdered in just 100 days from late July to early November 1942, a rate which is approximately 83% higher than the commonly suggested figure for the kill rate in the Rwandan genocide. In the time frame of July to October 1942, the overall death toll, including all killings of Jews and not just Operation Reinhard, amounted to two million killed in those four months alone. It was the single fastest rate of genocidal killing in history. During the operation, as many as two million Jews were sent to Bełżec extermination camp, Bełżec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martin Gottfried Weiss
Martin Gottfried Weiss, alternatively spelled Weiß ( – 29 May 1946), but best known as The Demon of Dachau was the commandant of the Dachau concentration camp in 1945 at the time of his arrest. He also served from April 1940 until September 1942 as the commandant of Neuengamme concentration camp, and later, from November 1943 until May 1944, as the fourth commandant of Majdanek concentration camp. He was executed for war crimes. Life Weiss was born in Weiden in der Oberpfalz. His father worked for the Royal Bavarian State Railways. He had two sisters and was raised as a Catholic. After school he continued his education at a mechanical engineering school in Landshut. He finished school in 1924 and worked as intern in an ironworks. Later he worked for about three and a half years for the Upper Palatine electric company. In the summer of 1926 he joined the Nazi Party and founded a chapter of the SA and of the HJ with two friends in Weiden. Later he studied electrical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hermann Florstedt
Arthur Hermann Florstedt (18 February 1895 – 5 April 1945) was a German SS official who served as the third commandant of Majdanek concentration camp from November 1942 to October 1943. Florstedt was a veteran of World War I and involved in right-wing paramilitaries before joining the Nazi Party in 1931. Florstedt rose through the ranks of the SS to hold high-ranking positions at various Nazi concentration camps from 1939, including Buchenwald where he developed a reputation for brutality against prisoners. Florstedt was arrested in 1943 during a corruption investigation into Karl-Otto Koch for stealing the valuables of Holocaust victims at Majdanek. Florstedt was convicted and sentenced to death, but his execution on 5 April 1945 shortly before the end of World War II is unconfirmed and his fate is unknown. Early life Arthur Hermann Florstedt was born on 18 February 1895 in Bitsch, Bezirk Lothringen (present-day Bitche, France) the son of an Imperial German Army sergeant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karl-Otto Koch
Karl-Otto Koch (; 2 August 1897 – 5 April 1945) was a mid-ranking commander in the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) of Nazi Germany who was the first commandant of the Nazi concentration camps at Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. From September 1941 until August 1942, he served as the first commandant of the Majdanek concentration camp in occupied Poland, stealing vast amounts of valuables and money from murdered Jews. His wife, Ilse Koch, also participated in the crimes at Buchenwald. Life Koch was born in Darmstadt, Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt, on 2 August 1897. His father worked in a local registrar's office and died when Karl was eight years old. After completing elementary school in 1912, Koch attended Mittelschule and completed a commercial apprenticeship. In 1916, he volunteered to join the Imperial German Army and fought on the Western Front until he was captured by the British. Koch spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of war and returned to Germany in 1919. As a soldier, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gas Chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. Poisonous agents used include hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide. History Donatien-Marie-Joseph de Vimeur, vicomte de Rochambeau, General Rochambeau developed a rudimentary method in 1803, during the Haitian Revolution, filling ships' cargo holds with sulfur dioxide to suffocate prisoners of war. The scale of these operations was brought to larger public attention in the book ''Napoleon's Crimes'' (2005), although the allegations of scale and sources were heavily questioned. In America, the utilization of a gas chamber was first proposed by Allan McLane Hamilton to the state of Nevada. Since then, gas chambers have been used as a method of execution of condemned prisoners in the United States and continue to be a legal execution method in three states, seeing nitrogen asphyxiation, legislated reintroduction with inert ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Max Koegel
Otto Max Koegel (16 October 1895 – 27 June 1946) was a Nazi officer who served as a commander at Lichtenburg, Ravensbrück, Majdanek and Flossenbürg concentration camps. In 1946 he was arrested for his role in The Holocaust, but hanged himself in prison before he could stand trial. Life Max Koegel was born on 16 October 1895 in Füssen, in the Kingdom of Bavaria. He was the fourth son of a carpenter who worked at a local furniture factory. Shortly before his sixth birthday, Koegel's mother died from complications during childbirth. In 1907, his father died and Max was sent to live with a family at a nearby farm. He also had to leave school and began training as a shepherd and later worked as a mountain guide. When the First World War broke out, Koegel volunteered to join the Bavarian infantry. He served in the military until 12 January 1919 and reached the rank of corporal. He was wounded three times, including once during the Battle of Verdun, and received the Iron Cro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lublin
Lublin is List of cities and towns in Poland, the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the centre of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of the Vistula River, located southeast of Warsaw. One of the events that greatly contributed to the city's development was the Union of Krewo, Polish–Lithuanian Union of Krewo in 1385. Lublin thrived as a centre of trade and commerce due to its strategic location on the route between Vilnius and Kraków; the inhabitants had the privilege of free trade in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Lublin Sejm, Parliament session of 1569 led to the creation of a Union of Lublin, real union between the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, thus creating the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Lublin witnessed the early stages of the Reformation in the 16th century. A Calvinist congregation wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SS-Totenkopfverbände
(SS-TV; or 'SS Death's Head Battalions') was a major branch of the Nazi Party's paramilitary (SS) organisation. It was responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps, concentration camps and extermination camps of Nazi Germany, among similar duties. It was both the successor and expanded organisation to the (guard units) formed in 1933. While the was the universal cap badge of the SS, the SS-TV also wore this insignia on the right Gorget patches, collar tab to distinguish itself from other SS formations. On 29 March 1936, concentration camp guards and administration units were officially designated as the (SS-TV). The SS-TV was an independent unit within the SS, with its own command structure. It ran the camps throughout Nazi Germany, Germany and later in German-occupied Europe, occupied Europe. Camps in Germany included Dachau concentration camp, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Bergen-Belsen, and Buchenwald concentration camp, Buchenwald; camps el ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Liebehenschel
Arthur Liebehenschel (; 25 November 1901 – 24 January 1948) was a German commandant at the Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps during the Holocaust. After the war, he was convicted of war crimes by the Polish government and executed in 1948. Early life Liebehenschel was born on 25 November 1901 in Posen (now Poznań). He studied economics and public administration. Too young to serve in World War I, Liebehenschel enrolled in the '' Freikorps "Grenzschutz Ost"'' in 1919. He also served as a sergeant major in the German armed forces ('' Reichswehr'') afterwards. SS career In 1932, Liebehenschel joined the Nazi Party and in 1934 the SS, where he served in the ''SS-Totenkopfverbände'' (SS-TV). Liebehenschel became the adjutant in the Lichtenburg concentration camp, and two years later was transferred to the Concentration Camps Inspectorate in Berlin. In 1942, when the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office was founded, Liebehenschel was assigned to the Depart ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
