Newsgroups: alt.revisionism,soc.history
Subject: Maidanek: Wholesale Shooting of Prisoners  (4 of 7)
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Nizkor Project http://www.nizkor.org
Keywords: Lublin,Maidanek

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   IV. THE WHOLESALE SHOOTING OF PRISONERS
   OF WAR AND CIVILIANS IN THE CAMP
   
      The wholesale extermination of the civilian population of European
   countries, including Poland and the occupied regions of the U.S.S.R., was
   the deliberate policy of Hitler Germany, which logically followed from her
   plan to enslave and exterminate the progressive and active part of the
   Slavonic peoples.
           The erection in enslaved Poland of camps for the wholesale
   extermination of European peoples and prisoners of war was prompted by the
   desire of the Hitlerite ruling clique to cover up and conceal their crimes
   in every possible way. These camps, including the Majdanek "Extermination
   Camp," were also places for the complete extermination of tho Jewish
   population. One of the methods of exterminating vast masses of people whom
   Hitler Germany regarded as undesirable was wholesale shooting, which was
   extensively practised in the Lublin "Extermination Camp."
           The bloody history of this camp commences with the wholesale
   shooting of Soviet prisoners of war, which the SS men carried out in
   November-December 1941. Of a contingent of over two thousand Soviet
   prisoners of war, only eighty survived; all the rest were shot, except for
   a small group who were tortured to death.
           In the period from January to April 1942 fresh contingents of
   Soviet prisoners of war arrived in the canmp and were shot.
           Jan Niedzialek, a Pole, a hired waggon driver at the camp, stated:
           "In the winter of 1942 the Germans exterminated about five thousand
   Russian prisoners of war in the following way: the prisoners were carted in
   motor trucks from their barracks to pits in the old quarry and there they
   were shot."
           Prisoners of war of the former Polish army, captured as far back as
   1939 and confined in different camps in Germany
   ------------------------------------------------------------pg 10--
   were already in 1940 collected iu the camp in Lipovaya Street in Lublin and
   soon after transferred in groups to the Majdanek "Extermination Camp" where
   they met with the same fate: systematic torment, killing, wholesale
   shooting, hanging, etc.
           The witness Reznik stated the following:
           "In January 1941, about four thousand of us Jewish prisoners of war
   were loaded into railway trucks and sent eastward. . . . We were brought to
   Lublin, told to get out of the train and handed over to SS men.
   Approximately in September or October 1942, they decided to leave in the
   camp in No. 7 Lipovaya Street only those prisoners who had factory
   qualifications and were needed by the city. All the rest, including myself,
   were sent to the Majdanek Camp. We all knew perfectly well that to be sent
   to the Majdanek Camp meant death."
           Of this contingent of four thousand prisoners of war only a few
   individuals, who succeeded in escaping from their work outside of the camp,
   survived.
           In the summer of 1943, three hundred Soviet officers were brought
   to the Majdanek Camp. Among them were two colonels and four majors. All the
   rest were captains and senior lieutenants. All the aforesaid officers were
   shot in the Camp.
           During the whole of 1942, the wholesale shooting of prisoners in
   the camp, as well as of inhabitants brought in from outside, was carried
   on.
           Tadeusz Drabik, a Pole, inhabitant of the village of Krembeck
   (eight kilometres from Lublin), one day saw the SS men bring up
   eighty-eight truck loads of people of different nationalities and ages-men,
   women and children. These people were taken to the Krembecki Woods were
   made to alight from the trucks, were stripped of all their clothing and
   valuables and then shot on the edge of pits which had been dug beforehand.
   During 1942 the Germans systematically carried out wholesale shooting in
   the Krembecki Woods.
   ------------------------------------------------------------pg 11--
           In the spring of 1942, six thousand persons arrived at the camp in
   one contingent; all were shot in the course of two days.
           On November 3, 1943, eighteen thousand four hundred persons were
   shot in the camp. Of these eight thousand four hundred were camp prisoners
   and ten thousand were people who had been brought here from the city and
   from other camps. Three days before this wholesale shooting, large trenches
   were dug within the precincts of the camp, behind the crematorium. The
   shooting began in the morning and ended late at night. The people were
   stripped naked. The SS men led them to the trenches in groups of fifty and
   one hundred, compelled them to lie face downwards in the bottom of the
   trench and shot them with automatic rifles. On top of the corpses another
   row of living persons was laid and these were also shot. This went on until
   the trench was filled. The corpses were then covered with a thin layer of
   earth. Two or three days later the bodies were disinterred and burnt in the
   crematorium and on bonfires.
           In order to drown the shrieks of the victims during the shooting,
   and also the sound of the firing, the Germans installed loudspeakers near
   the crematorium and in different parts of the camp, and all day long these
   loudspeakers blared forth jazz music.
           This wholesale shooting became widely known among the inhabitants
   of Lublin. SS man Hermann Vogel, who served at the camp, stated:
           "That day, in addition - to the people who were brought from the
   city, eight thousand four hundred persons were taken from the Lublin Camp
   and shot. I, know the exact figure because next day official information
   concerning the extermination of eight thousand four hundred persons was
   sent to the storehouse where I worked, as we had to check their clothing."
           Stanislawski, a Polish prisoner who worked in the camp office,
   stated the following concerning the shooting on November 3, 1943:
   ------------------------------------------------------------pg 12--
           "The Germans called this shooting 'Sonderbehandlung' (special
   treatment), and it was under this heading that the report was sent to
   Berlin. This report contained the following statement-I quote literally:
   'The difference between the number of prisoners in the camp in the morning
   and that of the evening arose as the result of the special extermination of
   eighteen thousand persons.'"
           The inhabitants of the village of Dziesiata were frequent witnesses
   of wholesale shooting, including those carried out in 1944. From March to
   July 22 inclusive, the Gestapo brought up a large number of Polish
   inhabitants, men, women and children, in motor trucks and carts. They were
   taken to the crematorium, near which they were stripped naked and then shot
   in the trenches.
           "There were days," stated the witness Niedzialek, who witnessed
   these wholesale shootings of Polish inhabitants, "when from two-hundred to
   three hundred and more persons were shot."
           The Soviet prisoner of war Kanunnikov witnessed the shooting in
   July 1943 of forty women with little children in field No. 1. Early in the
   morning the bodies of thc victims were taken to the crematorium to be
   burnt."
           In the latter half of May 1943, the SS men brought to the Krembecki
   Woods two lorries drawn by a tractor and a motor truck, all loaded with the
   dead bodies of Polish children.
           The witness Gangol stated:
           "I remember another glaring case which I personally witnessed, and
   which I fully confirm today: in the latter half of May 1943 the SS men
   brought to the Krembecki Woods two lorries drawn by a tractor and a motor
   truck, all loaded exclusively with Polish children. They were entirely
   naked. All the bodies of these children were piled up in stacks in the
   woods and burnt."
           The witness Krasovskaya informed the Commission of a case of the
   shooting, in April 1943, of three hundred women brought from Greece.
   ------------------------------------------------------------pg 13--
           The aforementioned cases of wholesale shooting represent only a
   small proportion of the cases collected by the commision.
           A Committee of Medical Experts under the chairmanship of Professor
   Szyling-Syngalewicz, Professor of Medical Jurisprudence at the Lublin
   Catholic University, and consisting of Dr. Rupniewski, Head Doctor of the
   Lublin City Administration; Lieutenant Colonel of the Army Medical Service
   Szkarabski, Medical Expert of a Front; Lieutenant Colonel of the Army
   Medical Service Krajewski, Dr. M. Sc., Chief Pathologist and Anatomist of a
   Front; Colonel Blochin of the Army Medical Service, Chief Toxicologist of a
   Front, and Captain Grafinska, Medical Expert of the First Polish Army,
   found as follows:
           "The examination of four hundred and sixty-seven corpses and two
   hundred and sixty-six skulls revealed traces of firearm wounds to the
   number of three hundred and forty two, indicating that it was a wide
   practice in the camp to sho[o]t prisoners, mainly in the back of the head,
   at close range, with weapons of 0.9 cm. calibre."
           Thus, the evidence of numerous witnesses as well as other proof
   (the exhumations carried out by the Committee of Medical Experts) prove
   that throughout the period of the existence of the Lublin Camp, the Germans
   carried out the wholesale shooting of prisoners, men, women and children,
   of different nationalities, some of whom were shot in the Krembecki Woods
   situated eight kilometres from Majdanek.
   

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