On 23 July 1944, Soviet forces advancing against the Germans liberated some 500 prisoners from Majdanek, on the outskirts of Lublin, the first major concentration/death camp to be liberated.
Opened in October 1941 with the arrival of approximately 2,000 Soviet prisoners of war, the camp was under construction for the entire period of its existence. The first transport of Jewish prisoners at Majdanek arrived about a month later in December 1941, with more Polish Jews deported there from the Lublin ghetto and elsewhere in the ensuing months.
Conditions at the camp were appalling, with overcrowding and no food or water. Jews were the overwhelmingly largest group in the camp, followed by Poles. In the spring of 1942, the Germans began implementing the "Final Solution" in the General Government within the framework of Operation Reinhard, the plot to annihilate all Jews in German-occupied Poland. The Germans and collaborators of other nationalities killed some six million Jews—approximately two-thirds of all Jews living in Europe in 1939—including tens of thousands in Majdanek, by gassing, shooting, and starvation, all while subjecting them to inhumane living conditions.
On 3 November 1943, following armed Jewish resistance during the Bialystok and Vilna ghetto deportations and the uprisings in the Treblinka and Sobibor killing centers, SS leadership implemented one of the largest –one-day killing sprees of the Holocaust in which at least 18,000 Jews from Lublin and camps in the area, and 8,000 other Jewish prisoners from Majdanek were annihilated in Operation Harvest Festival. In Majdanek, music was played throughout the camp over loudspeakers to drown out the sounds of mass murder.
In the spring of 1944, the SS evacuated most of the surviving prisoners to other camps as Soviet forces quickly approached the site. Soviet officials invited journalists to inspect the camp. In April, the first set of prisoners were transported to other camps including Natzweiler, Gross–Rosen, Auschwitz, Płaszów, Ravensbrűck and Mauthausen. Attempting to cover up evidence of their atrocities, the fleeing Germans dismantled barracks, cremated the bodies of the victims and burned incriminating documents. Other prisoners were forced to march hundreds of miles, often in frigid weather without proper clothing or shoes. Over the course of these weeks-longs marches, tens of thousands of prisoners died from the cold and from starvation, or were murdered for failing to keep up with the crowd.
Overall, between 95,000 and 130,000 people, overwhelmingly Jews, perished in the Majdanek concentration camp.
