The camp commandant had the primary control of its overall functioning. He coordinated the activities of all departments and units wihtin the garrison, and was responsible for its isolation and security.
The camp commandant post at Majdanek was subsequently held by:
Karl Otto Koch: January – August 1942,
Max Koegel: August 1942 – January 1943,
Hermann Florstedt: January – October 1943,
Martin Weiß: November 1943 – May 1944,
Arthur Liebehenschel: May – July 1944.
The members of the commandant staff were responsible for managing the camp matters. In late 1943, it included 270 SS-men assigned to six departments: I – commandant office, II – political department, III – prisoner camp department, IV – administration, V – camp physician, VI – department of ideological adjustment.
The women’s camp was managed by 28 female overseers, who formally were not SS members, but served in its auxiliary unit. Elsa Ehrich stood at its head, sharing the duties of department III leader and the prisoner field supervisor. She was subordinate directly to the camp commandant and partially to the political department.
Sentry guard was the most numerous unit in the KL Lublin garrison. It comprised a guards battalion (SS-Totenkopf-Sturmbann) that included several companies. The majority of its members were the Volksdeutsche – ethnic Germans who were not the citizens of the Third Reich before the war. Most of them were from Romania and the states of Yugoslavia. The SS guards were supported by several hundred Lithuanian policemen and the watchmen from the SS training facility in Trawniki.
The exact number of the garrison members remains unknown. It varied between several hundred and beyond 1,000 functionaries. In late 1943, the garrison included 1258 people, including 261 in the commandant staff, 881 in the sentry units, 97 Lithuanian policemen, and 19 female overseers. The total number of people who served at Majdanek exceeded 2,000.
