NEW ISSUE
OF THE VARIA MAGAZINE
On the eve of the 78th anniversary of the final liquidation of KL Lublin on July 22 we release a new issue of our "Varia" magazine. It is available in both Polish and English version.
State Museum at Majdanek
On July 20, 1941 Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler came to Lublin. During that visit – scheduled roughly a month after the launch of operation "Barbarossa" – he issued an order to create a concentration camp in Lublin. The compound was to be established on the eastern outskirts of the city and have the capacity of keeping 25-50 thousand prisoners at the early stage of its existance. The inmates were to be exploited as slave labour force in the workshops and construction sites supervised by the SS and police.
Although the first prisoners did not arrive at the camp until October 1941, the order given by Himmler in July was the first step in Majdanek's history. Three years later, on July 22, 1944, the camp was liquidated. Out of 130,000 women, children, and men who went through its gates, approx. 78,000 lost their lives in KL Lublin.
This historical timeline serves as a framework for today's release of another "Varia" magazine volume. The texts include a story of Helena Pawluk - an extraordinary Polish woman, who helped a Jewish doctor escape from the camp and nearly paid for it with her own life; a comparison of the German costruction plans and the actual form of Majdanek; and a selection of testimonies given by the Polish prisoners deported in 1941, in which they describe the camp at the early stage of its existance.
Additionally, the new "Varia" comes with a range of historical outlines devoted to various national groups among the inmates. It is a reference to the latest monograph "The Prisoners of KL Lublin 1941–1944" released this year, which describes the camp history from various persepctives of those deported to the camp from all across the German-occupied Europe.
On Friday, July 22, we also organise a guided tour based on the publication. In order to mark the 78th anniversary of the liquidation of KL Lublin we are gathering with the camp survivors and at 1:30 pm we will lay flowers and light candles at the Mausoleum.