The German concentration camp at Majdanek was a site of mass extermination. The high mortality was exacerbated, apart from the general harshness of the living conditions, arduous work and diseases, by direct forms of murder such as drowning in sewage pits, hangings, beatings, or phenol injections.

The greatest number of people were murdered by firing squads and in the gas chambers. Executions were conducted in the entire period of the camp’s operation. The largest mass execution took place on November 3, 1943, when in a single day, approximately 18,000 Jews from Majdanek and other labour camps in Lublin were murdered near the camp crematorium. From the autumn of 1943, executions were carried out on the Polish prisoners brought to Majdanek from the Gestapo prison at the Lublin castle. The in-camp resistance reports and survivors testimonies also include information about the SS-men shooting people as a form of entertainment.

Between autumn 1942 and early September 1943, extermination of prisoners, mainly Jews, was conducted in the gas chambers with the use of carbon monoxide and Zyklon B. Jews underwent constant selection: not only upon their arrival at Majdanek but also later, once already admitted and registered in the camp. Good physical condition and healthy appearance were the main factors determining one’s chances of surviving the selections.

Prisoners in the final stages of emaciation or in terminal stages of diseases were sent to specially isolated barracks known as Gammelblocks. There, deprived of food or any medical assistance, they were condemned to slow agony and death. After several days, those kept inside that were still alive would be taken to the gas chambers.

Initially, bodies of the victims were buried in mass graves, and later burned in one of the crematoria or on pyres mounted in the open air. The ashes, mixed with soil and waste, would be later used as fertiliser. After the camp liquidation in July 1944, around 1,300 m³ of compost mixed with ashes was collected at Majdanek and later placed in the Mausoleum.