22 July 2024 was marked by the 80th anniversary of the final liquidation of the Majdanek German concentration camp. The former KL Lublin’s prisoners, representatives of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the Diplomatic Corps, local authorities, the military, uniformed services, and various organisations dealing with remembrance of World War II – on that day they all gathered near the Column of Three Eagles.

In her opening speech Jadwiga Wakulska – chair to the Lublin’s branch of the Polish Association of Former Political Prisoners of Nazi Prisons and Concentration Camps – shared the former inmates’ message:

We – the former prisoners of the Majdanek concentration camp, we – whose families remained here forever, we – standing here today near the ashes of the murdered, we appeal for remembrance, for reconciliation, and for peace. You shall be our ambassadors – carry this memory to the next generations. Do not let the phrase ‘Never Again’ be just some empty words.

Piotr Szpanowski, from the Cultural Heritage Department of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, read the letter from the Minister Hanna Wróblewska. In her words she recalled that just after the camp’s liquidation, the State Museum at Majdanek began its functioning:

The work of the [Majdanek Museum] staff is invaluable for the sake preserving the memory of the victims and the history of this site. Thanks to their efforts, the next generations will be able to discover the truth about the events that took place in KL Lublin, and to honour those who suffered and perished there.

In the final speech the Museum Director Tomasz Kranz, remarked that Majdanek was the first large camp about which the world could fully learn:

The end of Majdanek’s functioning was also a turning point of uncovering the German crimes committed during World War II. Thousands of Lublin’s residents entered the abandoned camp grounds, and the Polish-Soviet investigative commission as well as foreign reporters followed soon. In the summer of 1944, the front pages of world’s numerous newspapers, mostly in the USA and the Soviet Union, brought out the horrifying descriptions of Majdanek, as a site of unparallel barbarity and the mass extermination of prisoners coming from various occupied European countries.

After the ecumenical prayer led by Abel – the Orthodox Bishop of Lublin and Chełm, Adam Bab – the Auxiliary Bishop of the Lublin Archdiocese, Wojciech Rudkowski – the Auxiliary Bishop at the Warsaw Diocese of the Evangelical-Augsburg of Poland, and Agnieszka Kolibksa from the Lublin’s Jewish Community, the ceremony’s participants laid flowers and wreaths at the Column of Three Eagles.

The following parts of the programme revolving around the 80th anniversary of the Majdanek camp’s liquidation included:

• Unveiling of commemorative mural painted on the Visitor Service Centre
• Book premiere of the account written by a camp survivor Bolesław Burski: Pawiak–Majdanek–Auschwitz
• Curator’s tour of our latest Mementos exhibition