FIRST DAY OF ISSUE 20 SEPTEMBER 1969
THIS SPECIAL COMMEMORATIVE STAMP WAS ISSUED IN 1969 FOR THE UNVEILING (OPENING) OF THE MONUMENT IN COMMEMORATION OF THE VICTIMS WHO DIED IN THE MAJDANEK DEATH CAMP ESTABLISHED BY NAZI GERMANY. THE CAMP WAS ESTABLISHED NEAR THE CITY OF LUBLIN IN NAZI GERMANY OCCUPIED LANDS IN POLAND.
THIS ITEM IS IN GOOD CONDITION AND IS A MUST FOR EVERY SERIOUS HISTORIAN AND COLLECTOR OF POLAND, GERMANY, JUDAICA OR WORLD WAR II (WWII) AND WILL MAKE AN INTERESTING ADDITION TO YOUR COLLECTION.
Majdanek was a German Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland, established during the German Nazi occupation of Poland. The camp operated from October 1, 1941 until July 22, 1944, when it was captured nearly intact by the advancing Soviet Red Army. Over 79,000 people died there (59,000 of them Polish Jews) during the 34 months of its operation.
The name ´Majdanek´ (\"little Majdan\") derives from the nearby Majdan Tatarski (\"Tatar Maidan\") district of Lublin, and was given to the camp in 1941 by the locals, who were aware of its existence. In Nazi documents, and for reasons related to its funding, Majdanek was initially \"Prisoner of War Camp of the Waffen-SS in Lublin\". It was renamed Konzentrationslager Lublin\" (Concentration Camp Lublin) in February 1943.
Among German Nazi concentration camps, Majdanek was unusual in that it was located near a major city, not hidden away at a remote rural location. It is also notable as the best-preserved concentration camp of the Holocaust - there had been too little time for the Nazis to destroy the evidence before the Red Army arrived.
By mid-October 1942 the camp held 9,519 registered prisoners, of which 7,468 (or 78.45%) were Jews, and another 1,884 (19.79%) were non-Jewish Poles. By August 1943, there were 16,206 prisoners in the main camp, of which 9,105 (56.18%) were Jews and 3,893 (24.02%) were non-Jewish Poles. Minority contingents included Belarusians, Ukrainians, Russians, Germans, Austrians, Slovenes, Italians, and French and Dutch nationals. According to the data from the official Majdanek State Museum, 300,000 persons were inmates of the camp at one time or another. The prisoner population at any given time was much lower.
From October 1942 onwards, Majdanek also had female overseers, SS troopers who had been trained at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. These women included Elsa Erich, Hermine Braunsteiner, Hildegard Lächert and Rosy Suess (or Süss).
Within the general framework of Operation Reinhard, Majdanek functioned as sorting and storage depot for property and valuables taken from the victims at the killing centers in Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. Although Majdanek also occasionally functioned as a killing center for Jews, this was initially not as systematic as in the three specifically Operation Reinhard camps: Of the more than 2,000,000 Jews killed in the course of Operation Reinhard, 59,000 (of 78,000 altogether) were killed in Majdanek.
Majdanek did not initially have subcamps. These were incorporated in early autumn 1943 when the remaining forced labor camps around Lublin (Budzyn, Trawniki, Poniatowa, Krasnik, Pulawy, and the \"Airstrip\" and Lipowa camps) became sub-camps of Majdanek.
Operation Reinhard continued until early November 1943, when the last Generalgouvernement Jews were exterminated as part of Operation \"Harvest festival\". With respect to Majdanek, the most notorious of this wave of executions occurred on November 3, 1943 when 18,400 Jews were killed on a single day. On November 4, 25 Jews who had succeeded in hiding during the killings of the day before were found and executed. Another 611 prisoners, 311 women and 300 men, were commanded to sort through the clothes and remains of the dead. The men were at first commanded to bury the dead, but were later assigned to Sonderkommando 1005, where they had to exhume the same bodies for cremation. The men were then themselves executed. The 311 women were subsequently sent to Auschwitz where they were gassed. By the end of Operation \"Harvest Festival,\" Majdanek had only 71 Jews left (out of a total of 6,562 prisoners).
Executions of the remaining prisoners continued at Majdanek in the months thereafter. Between December 1943 and March 1944, Majdanek received approximately 18,000 so-called \"invalids,\" many of whom where subsequently gassed with Zyklon B (carbon monoxide was used in the very early period). Executions by firing squad continued as well, with 600 shot on January 21, 1944, 180 shot on January 23, 1944, and 200 shot on March 24, 1944.
In late July 1944, with Soviet forces rapidly approached Lublin, the Germans hastily evacuated the camp. But the staff had only succeeded in partially destroying the crematoria before Soviet Red Army troops arrived on July 24, 1944, making Majdanek the best-preserved camp of the Holocaust. It was the first major concentration camp liberated by Allied forces, and the horrors found there were widely publicised.
Although 1,000 inmates had previously been forcibly marched to Auschwitz (of whom only half arrived alive), the Red Army still found thousands of inmates, mainly POWs, still in the camp and ample evidence of the mass murder that had occurred there.
Notable inmates:
- Halina Birenbaum - writer, poet and translator
- Marian Filar - pianist
- Otto Freundlich - one of the artists included in the Nazis´ 1937 \"Degenerate Art\" exhibition
- Israel Gutman - historian
- Henio Zytomirski - child becoming an icon of the Holocaust in Poland.
- Dmitry Karbyshev - Soviet general, Hero of the Soviet Union
- Omelyan Kovch - Ukrainian priest
- Igor Newerly - writer
- Vladek Spiegelman, whose story is the basis for Art Spiegelman´s Maus.
- Rudolf Vrba - transferred to Auschwitz, from which he escaped, and about which he co-authored the Vrba-Wetzler report, one of the first inside reports of the camp, and published during wartime.
- Mietek Grocher - Survived nine different camps. Now a lecturer residing in Sweden. Author of Jag överlevde (eng. I Survived).
- Maryla Husyt Finkelstein - Late mother of the author and Middle East critic Dr Norman Finkelstein.
Camp commanders:
1. SS-Standartenführer - Karl Otto Koch (September 1941 to July 1942)
2. SS-Sturmbannführer - Max Kögel (August 1942 to October 1942)
3. SS-Obersturmführer - Hermann Florstedt (October 1942 to November 3, 1943)
4. SS-Obersturmbannführer - Martin Gottfried Weiss (November 4, 1943 to May 18, 1944)
5. SS-Obersturmbannführer - Arthur Liebehenschel (May 19, 1944 to July 22, 1944).
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