Description
Object description
Translation of Majdanek
Content description
Translation of Majdanek
Majdanek, Director I[rina] Setkina
'Lublin celebrated victory...
This day brought an end to the Hitlerite yoke. The Red Army and units of Polish forces entered the town
The people enthusiastically welcomed their liberators. During these very same days a terrible word began to spread around the world: Majdanek.
titles:
Majdanek
Film documents of the monstrously evil deeds of the Germans in the Majdanek extermination camp in the town of Lublin.
Camera: A[venir] Sofin, R[oman] Karmen, V[iktor] Shtatland
A Central, Order of the Red Banner, Studio of Documentary Films release, 1944
The prisoners of Majdanek... those the Germans didn't manage to shoot, poison, or burn: they are the witnesses to this bloody nightmare.
Majdanek... That's what this Gestapo camp 2 kilometres from Lublin was called, and it is famous the world over as a factory or rather industrial complex of death. The Germans themselves called it a 'Vernichtungslager' which means an 'extermination camp.'
As they retreated they tried to blow up and burn down the camp's buildings, but they didn't entirely succeed in doing so.
Amongst those captured there were Hitlerite SS-executioners, who had worked in the camp.
For the investigation of the evil crimes committed by the Germans at Majdanek, a Polish-Soviet Extraordinary Commission was formed.
Professor Grashchenkov (USSR).
The Germans began to build 'Vernichtungslager' Majdanek as early as 1940 and finished it by the beginning of 1943.
The Camp comprised 6 fields and was surrounded by two rows of barbed wire, through which a high voltage current was passed.
At every step there were warning signs: 'Stop!.. Photography is forbidden... Anyone disobeying will be shot
Here too there is a sign: "Deutschland über Alles." Germany above everything.'
Throughout the whole camp there are watchtowers for guards with machineguns.
Troops of the SS kept guard.
Majdanek's 144 barracks housed as many as 45 thousand prisoners at a time.
People from all over occupied Europe were deported here: from France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece, Norway,Poland, and the occupied territories of the USSR, hundreds of thosands of people were brought for extermination.
All of this was done on the directives of Hitler's criminal government. Himmler, the hangman himself, in the Summer of 1943, visited the Majdanek extermination camp.
The prisoners were exterminated systematically. Their place was taken by new transports of victims. For those sent there, Majdanek was a temporary stage on the path to death.
Rotenfuhrer SS Theo Scholen, who worked in the camp, said when questioned by the Commission: 'The camp was termed an 'Extermination camp' because a colossal quantity of people was annihilated here...'
On a daily basis, investigations and excavations uncovered new details about the heinous deeds of the Hitlerite criminals at Majdanek.
A forensic medical examination established that in the camp, shootings were usually in the back of the head at point-blank range.
Mass shootings at Majdanek were one of the methods of annihilation of an enormous number of people Hitler's Germany didn't like.
They would shoot a thousand people and more at a time.
A former prisoner of the camp, Stanislavskii, a Pole, stated before the Commission: '3rd November 1943 on a single day 18,400 prisoners were shot... To drown out the gun shots and screams of the victims, powerful speakers were set up playing up-beat music. The Germans called this shooting 'Sondersbehandlung' – the special undertaking.
One witness, the Pole Tadeusz Budzen told the commission: 'A group of academics and specialists; 1,200 professors, engineers and doctors arrived from Greece and were exterminated in this camp, every single one of them.'
Another tested method for mass the annihilation of people was asphyxiation by gas and poisonous substances... This is one of the six gas chambers discovered at Majdanek.
This is the place from which, from a control panel, the SS man released the gas...
And through this small window the executioners observed the effect of the gas. Every day large groups of people were destroyed. Often instead of gas a powerfully poisonous substance – 'Zyklon B' was used.
The prisoners were told they were being led to the bathhouse for a wash, they undressed...
Then they were herded through this door into the chamber. The chamber was packed full to the limit of victims and people were killed with 'Zyklon.'
SS Obersharfuhrer Ternes informed the commission: 'I was personally told by SS Stormfuhrer, doctor Rindfleisch, that on the evening of the 21 October 1943 in one of the gas chambers 300 children of ages 3 to 10 years old were killed.
Former prisoner, Benem, a Dutchman testified that: 'On the first day of my imprisonment in the camp, in April 1943, I saw around 200 prisoners killed. They were brought from the third field, made to undress and led to the bath building. A short time later their corpses were being carried out of the gas chamber.'
Kampfpolizei [military policeman?] Heinz Stalbe, who worked in the camp, testified that: 'In July 1943, 32 prisoners, who had been working, servicing the gas chambers, were themselves gassed. This was done to hide the traces of the crimes.'
End of Reel 1
Reel 2
The Hitlerites hoped to hide their grave crimes. Starting in 1942, they began to burn the corpses of the exterminated in specially constructed crematoria.
The ovens burnt uninterrupted, the temperature reached 1,500 degrees Celsius. To fit as many corpses as possible into the ovens, extremities were chopped off.
Each oven could be packed with up to four corpses. The incineration lasted 15minutes. When all of the ovens were working round the clock, 1,920 corpses could be burnt...
The smell of burnt corpses constantly hung over the death camp.
These are some photographs of the dead.
They were also burnt in these ovens, among the 680, 000 corpses of incinerated prisoners in Majdanek.
Here were incinerated prominent Polish scientists, professors Michailowicz and Pomirowski, Wonsewicz, a member of the Polish Supreme Court and many other prominent representatives of the European intelligentsia.
Kampfpolizai Stalbe testified: 'I witnessed a woman – a Pole – being thrown into one of the crematorium ovens alive, with her hands and feet bound.
All the components for this powerful crematorium were designed and built by the firm 'Rechkemmer ... The firm's name was advertised right here in the camp.
As well as burning in ovens, the Germans also constantly incinerated corpses on gigantic bonfires...
On the territory of the camp and in the nearby Kremenec forest they burnt 300 thousand corpses on bonfires.
In all 1 million 380,000 people were incinerated here.
The ash and charred human bones were mixed with manure for the fertilisation of the camp's vegetable garden. 135 cubic metres of this compost was discovered.
More material evidence of the blood-stained, heinous deeds of the Nazi fiends was also discovered – storehouses of the victims' possessions.
Footwear from many cities of Europe. Men's, women's, youth's, children's... The widest variety of styles and sizes. In this single storehouse, next to the crematorium there were 820, 000 pairs of footwear from the dead.!
Another storehouse belonging to the Gestapo, in Lublin itself, on Chopin Street.
The effects of the deceased became the property of Hitler's state.
Children's toys and dolls made profit for the executioners.
Nothing was spared...
Everything was pedantically sorted and packed for despatch to Germany.
SS Rotenfuhrer Vogel stated before the Commission: 'I alone in a short period in 1944 sent 18 goods wagons to Germany with the possessions of those exterminated in the camp. Everything was sent to the address: Plötzensee, Berlin, Straf-anstalt'
The documents of the deceased ... Poles, Russians, Dutch, Frenchmen, Czechs, Serbs, Norwegians, Danes, Greeks ...
Homer Fontaineau, French, arable farmer, 20 years old
Bruno Ceriac, Italian, primary school teacher.
Josef Jansen-Petrus, Dutch – fitter, 20 years old.
Konstantin Sanikopoulos and his sister – Greeks.
Irina-Eleonora Peters, a Pole from the town of Radom, 32 years old.
These are prisoners of Majdanek, who by evaded chance death: the Frenchman Le Dû Corentain and the Dutchman, Benem
Tomaszek, a Czech... They all tell of the executions, the inhuman sufferings, and torture they underwent, as if in a blood-soaked dream. The Polish –Soviet commission for the Investigation of Nazi Atrocities in Lublin established:
that the primary guilt for these heinous deeds lies with Hitler's government, the Ober-hangman Himmler and their henchmen in the SS and SD on the territory of the Lublin region.
title:
Liberated Lublin declared a period of mourning for the victims of Majdanek.
The end
Physical description
35mm