CONTENT WARNING:   This article deals with the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp, war crimes, and the public execution of the perpetrators in 1944. Purpose: exclusively historical education and remembrance.

December 3, 1944 – Lublin, Poland:   The first public execution of Majdanek guardsmen

Less than five months after the liberation   of the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp  by the Red Army (July 24, 1944), the world witnessed one of the earliest war crimes trials and the very first public execution of Holocaust perpetrators on Polish soil.

Majdanek – the second liberated camp – was recaptured almost intact: gas chambers, crematorium, mass graves, and tens of thousands of victims’ shoes.
Approximately   79,000 people were   murdered here, including around   59,000 Jews  .

A historical process

According to the   August Decree of August 31, 1944,  a special court was established in Lublin.

Six former employees of Majdanek were put on trial between November 27 and December 2, 1944:

Anton Thernes – deputy commandant, responsible for the gas chambers

Wilhelm Gerstenmeier – Zyklon B warehouse manager

Theodor Schöllen – notorious guard with a whip

Heinrich Stalp, Hermann Vogel and Kapo Edmund Pohlmann

They were convicted for operating the gas chambers, the selections, the mass murders, and brutal mistreatment.

On December 2, 1944, all six were sentenced to death.

Execution day – December 3, 1944

The gallows were erected right next to the   crematorium in Majdanek  – exactly where smoke once rose day and night.

Tens of thousands of Lublin residents, former prisoners, Red Army soldiers, and international journalists gathered.
The survivors were so overwhelmed by their emotions that security forces had to prevent the crowd from trampling the condemned men.

Five of the condemned men were hanged one after the other.
Kapo   Edmund Pohlmann   had taken his own life in his cell the night before.

As the trapdoors opened, a shout of jubilation rose from the crowd – not a cry of joy, but an expression of liberation after years of unimaginable suffering.

This was the   first public execution   of Holocaust perpetrators at the site of their crimes – a powerful symbol that justice, albeit belatedly, had finally arrived.

Today Majdanek is a   state museum and memorial  , where the gas chambers, the crematorium and the ashes of tens of thousands are preserved.

Every year on December 3rd, Poles and visitors silently lay flowers at the site where justice was administered.

We tell this story not to incite hatred, but to honor the 79,000 souls who rest forever in Majdanek, and to remind the world:

Justice must always be sought – wherever the crime was committed, whatever the cost.