Ma rta Gru dz ińs ka
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Jewish POWs–soldiers of the Polish Army taken prisoner during the September 1939 campaign and imprisoned in the camp in Lipowa Street in Lublin from December 1940. Along with Soviet POWs brought to Lublin from the Stallag in Chełm, they were the first group of prisoners forced into construction work at Majdanek. After completing their work, they were taken back to their “parent camp.”10 A typhus epidemic caused an enormous mortality rate among the Soviet prisoners and quickly spread to the Lipowa camp. Its commandant refused to continue sending Jewish POWs to work and, consequently, they were forced to carry out a roundup among the inhabitants of Lublin ghetto.11 From the moment the Lublin Jews were imprisoned in Majdanek, their relatives and the Judenrat in Lublin were making efforts to obtain their release from the camp. At the end of January 1942, when consent to the release of some of the skilled workers was granted, it turned out that only 17 persons out of 150 prisoners had survived.12 This high mortality rate was caused by the typhus epidemic and terrible living and working conditions. Later on, POWs from the Lipowa camp were imprisoned at Majdanek for a period of several weeks as punishment, usually for escape attempts.13 Some of them became the socalled functionary prisoners in Majdanek.14 Another large group of Jews from Lublin was brought to Majdanek in April 1942, after the liquidation of the ghetto in the Podzamcze district and establishment of the new ghetto in the Majdan Tatarski suburb where too many people stayed “illegally”. On 20 April 1942, about 1000–150015 men, women and children were sent to Majdanek. It was the first transport to include entire families. Able-bodied men men joined the ranks to the camp’s inmates, some persons were released and the remainder were transported in groups to the Krępiec forest to be shot.16 Anna Bach who was sent to Majdanek with her eight-year-old daughter Diana thus remembers the time at the camp: “I saw trucks full of people leaving and coming back empty after a short time. I also saw the loading of the corpses of people who suffocated in the crowd or died of heart attack or exhaustion. A German would quickly add up the number of the dead and the living. This set me thinking, I understood that everyone was being killed. One shed was emptied after another, and if a few people remained in one shed because there was no room for them in the last truck, they were ordered into another shed that was still full of people. In the passage between the sheds, I heard that everyone is being taken to the Krępiec forest.”17 Anna Bach, being an employee of the Jewish administration, and her daughter were released from the camp thanks to the efforts of Dr Alten, the President of the Judenrat in Lublin. However, she lost her parents and two sisters ibid. One of the Jewish POWs recalls: “They were sending us, the POWs, to Lublin ghetto, to catch the Jews. How tragic and savage it was that we, Jewish prisoners of war, had to seize several hundred Jews from Lublin who were then sent to Majdanek and who never returned from there.” Archiwum Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego, Ring., I/377, NN, Relacja, sheet 6. 12 R. Kuwałek, Żydzi lubelscy…, p. 4. 13 M. Grudzińska, V. Rezler-Wasielewska, p. 506. 14 ibid, p. 510. 15 T. Kranz, Eksterminacja Żydów na Majdanku…, p. 38; According to Kuwałek, the number could be about 2500–3000. R. Kuwałek, Żydzi lubelscy…, p. 13. 16 R. Kuwałek, Zbrodnie w Lesie Krępieckim…, p. 285; R. Kuwałek, Żydzi lubelscy…p. 13. 17 A. Bach, Żydzi z Lublina na Majdanku, [In:] Majdanek. Obóz koncentracyjny w relacjach więźniów i świadków, preface, selection and editing M. Grudzińska, Lublin 2011, pp. 23–24. 10 11