A group of six
members of Majdanek personnel – who had not managed to escape – were arraigned
before the Soviet-Polish Special Criminal Court immediately following the
camp's liberation of July 23, 1944. After the trial, and deliberations which
lasted from November 27, 1944 to December 2, 1944 all accused were found guilty
of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, and sentenced to death by
hanging. They included SS-Obersturmführer Anton Thernes, SS-Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Gerstenmeier, SS-Oberscharführer Hermann Vögel, Kapo Edmund Pohlmann, SS-Rottenführer
Theodor Schöllen and Kapo Heinrich Stalp, all of whom were executed by
hanging on December 3, 1944 except for Pohlmann, who had committed suicide the
night before.
I will post information
about the Deputy Camp Commandant, Anton Thernes from Wikipedia.
SS-Obersturmführer Anton Thernes (February 8, 1892 – December 3,
1944) was a Nazi German war criminal, deputy commandant of administration at
the notorious Majdanek concentration camp on the
outskirts of Lublin, Poland in World War II. He was tried at the Majdanek
Trials and executed on December 3, 1944 along with five other war criminals
near the gas chambers and the Majdanek crematorium.
Showers (left) and gas
chambers (right) at Majdanek
|
War Crimes
Thernes
was married with six children in Trier before the Nazi German invasion of Poland. A member of the SS, Thernes served as the last administrative
chief of KL Lublin / Majdanek. He was also in charge of food and slave labour
administration, starvation rationing, and the maintenance of camp structures
including the storage depot for property and valuables stolen from the Holocaust victims at the killing centers in
Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka.
Thernes
was given the task of destroying the evidence of crimes against humanity and
genocide, but ran out of time due to his ineptitude and lethargy. Instead of
blowing up the chimneys and torching his city of death, the SS actually brought
an additional 500 prisoners from Lublin for the last timely kill, while the T-34 tanks were already
at the gates. Thernes was caught by the Soviets and tried at the Majdanek
Trials together with his assistant SS-Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Gerstenmeier. He denied knowing anything,
but the proceedings were swamped with testimonial proofs offered by
eyewitnesses. He was executed on December 3, 1944 along with five other war
criminals, close to the gas chambers and the Majdanek
crematorium.
The camp's original
crematorium with reconstructed wooden building around it, Majdanek c. 2006
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Harvest Festival
During
the mere 34 months of camp operation, more than 79,000 people were murdered at
the main camp alone (59,000 of them Polish Jews).
Some 18,000 Jews were killed at Majdanek on November 3, 1943 during the largest
single-day, single-camp massacre of the
Holocaust, named Harvest Festival
(totalling 43,000 with subcamps).
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