The Majdanek State Museum () is a memorial museum and education centre founded in the fall of 1944 on the grounds of the

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

Majdanek death camp located in

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 i ...

, 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 World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. 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 Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

death camp, with largely intact gas chambers and crematoria. The camp became a state monument of

martyrology A martyrology is a catalogue or list of martyrs and other saints and beati arranged in the calendar order of their anniversaries or feasts. Local martyrologies record exclusively the custom of a particular Church. Local lists were enriched by na ...

by the 1947 decree of the

Polish Parliament The parliament of Poland is the Bicameralism, bicameral legislature of Poland. It is composed of an upper house (the Senate of Poland, Senate) and a lower house (the Sejm). Both houses are accommodated in the Sejm and Senate Complex of Poland, S ...

(Sejm). In the same year, some 1,300 m³ of surface soil mixed with human ashes and fragments of bones were collected and arranged into a large mound (since turned into a mausoleum). By comparison, the

Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) d ...

liberated a half a year later, on 27 January 1945, was first declared a national monument in April 1946, but handed over to Poland by the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

only in 1947. The act of Polish Parliament of 2 July 1947, declared them both as state monuments of martyrology at the same time (Dz.U. 1947 nr 52 poz. 264/265). Majdanek received the status of Poland's national museum in 1965. The retreating Germans did not have time to destroy the facility. During its 34 months of operation, more than 79,000 people were murdered at Majdanek main camp alone (59,000 of them

Polish Jews The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jews, Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the long pe ...

) and between 95,000 and 130,000 people in the entire Majdanek system of subcamps. 18,400 Jews were killed at Majdanek on 3 November 1943, during the largest single-day, single-camp massacre of

the Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

, named Harvest Festival (totalling 43,000 with two subcamps). In 1969, on the 25th anniversary of the Majdanek liberation, a stunningly emotional monument dedicated to Holocaust victims was erected on the grounds of the former Nazi extermination camp. It was designed by a Polish sculptor and architect Wiktor Tołkin, who also designed the symbolic tombstone at Stutthof. The monument consists of three parts, the symbolic Pylon (gate, 11

meter The metre (or meter in US spelling; symbol: m) is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). Since 2019, the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of of ...

s tall and 35 meters wide), the road, and the Mausoleum, containing a mound of ashes of the victims. The Museum is also in possession of the archives left behind by the SS after a failed attempt at their destruction by ''Obersturmführer'' Anton Thernes, tried at the Majdanek Trials.

Recent history

In 2003, a new obelisk was erected at Majdanek to the memory of Jewish victims of '' Erntefest''. In 2004, a new branch of Majdanek State Museum was inaugurated at the Belzec extermination camp nearby. Belzec was created for implementing the

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 ...

during

. And finally, in 2005 additional archeological works were conducted, resulting in new items being unearthed at the camp site, buried by Jewish prisoners in 1943. On 2 September 2009 the Majdanek Museum was awarded the Gold Medal ''Gloria Artis'' for outstanding contributions to Polish culture by Deputy State Secretary Minister Tomasz Merta. Two other recipients included the Muzeum Stutthof and the

Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum () is a museum on the site of the Nazi German Auschwitz concentration camp in Oświęcim, Poland. The site includes the main concentration camp at Auschwitz I and the remains of the concentration and e ...

. There was a massive fire at one of the barracks in Majdanek on the night of 9-10 August 2010. Some 7,000 pairs of prisoners' shoes were destroyed, according to the museum administration. The cause of the blaze is unknown. The museum states that bringing children under 13 to Majdanek is not advisable, because noisy behavior is forbidden. Since 1 May 2012 the Museum also serves as the main branch of the nearby

Sobibór Museum The Sobibór Museum or the Museum of the Former Sobibór Nazi Death Camp (), is a Polish state-owned museum devoted to remembering the atrocities committed at the former Sobibor extermination camp located on the outskirts of Sobibór, Lublin Voivo ...

Notes and references

External links

Państwowe Muzeum na Majdanku
(The Majdanek State Museum) official website.

Towarzystwo Opieki nad Majdankiem – Oddział w Białymstoku
(The Society for the Preservation of Majdanek) official website. {{DEFAULTSORT:Majdanek State Museum Majdanek concentration camp 1944 in Poland 1947 in Poland Holocaust museums in Poland World War II sites in Poland World War II sites of Nazi Germany Registered museums in Poland Museums in Lublin Voivodeship