In the face of Russia's military aggression against sovereign Ukraine and the wave of refugees seeking safety on the territory of Poland, the directorate and employees of the State Museum at Majdanek as well as its branches in Bełżec and Sobibór decided to actively help the people affected by war.

On the night of 16–17 March, 1942, the German police functionaries initiated the deportations from the ghetto in Lublin. Around 1,000 Jews, entirely oblivious of their fate, were herded into freight cars and sent to the death camp in Bełżec every day. The annihilation of Lublin’s Jewish community was the first step of the enormous extermination programme codenamed “Einsatz Reinhardt.”

CALL FOR PAPERS || We invite historians, scholars, regionalist researches, and students to participate in the academic conference “The infrastructure of operation ‘Reinhardt.’ Sites, sources, research postulates” which will be held in Lublin on May 23-25, 2022.

42 photographs taken at different times of a day and year comprise the newest publication of the State Museum at Majdanek. The photos taken by Krzysztof Stanek, an employee of our Department of Communications and Public Relations, included in the presented album show the places and buildings located in the former German Nazi concentration camp at Majdanek.

In 2005, the UN General Assembly established January 27th as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This date refers to the day of Auschwitz-Birkenau camp liberation in 1945 and is an opportunity to commemorate Jewish victims who were murdered by Nazi Germany during World War II.

Are you a university student? Do you speak foreign languages? Are you interested in history? The course for a tour guide at the State Museum at Majdanek is your chance to take up a job which is not only easy to combine with studies, but which will also be an opportunity to gain valuable experience and to establish contact with people from all over the world.

On January 11, 2022, the Museum presented a new monograph concerning the history of the German Nazi concentration camp at Majdanek. The book entitled "The Prisoners of KL Lublin 1941-1944" focuses on the fates and personal experiences of the people that for various reasons were deported to the camp from nearly all territories of the German-occupied Europe.

On January 11, at 5 p.m. we organise a premiere event related to the new book prepared and released by the State Museum at Majdanek. “The Prisoners of KL Lublin 1941-1944” – edited by Tomasz Kranz and Wojciech Lenarczyk – describes the history of the people, who under many pretexts were imprisoned behind the barbed wires of Majdanek by the German occupier.

We invite you to read the latest issue of this year's Varia magazine. It is published in the Polish-English language version.

The State Museum at Majdanek is the first museum of martyrdom in Poland in which historical education is based on the concept of the pedagogy of remembrance. The aim of this didactic model commemorating the victims of Nazism is to encourage students and adults to undertake independent activities in order to acquire knowledge about World War II and the Holocaust.

Jules Schelvis (1921–2016) not only wrote down his memoirs describing his fate during World War II, but as the only Sobibór survivor, he also created a monograph concentrating on the history of SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor. The Polish version of Schelvis’ work has just been released by the State Museum at Majdanek.

In November 2021, the archival resources of the State Museum at Majdanek were enriched by two secret messages written by Tadeusz Tuz to his family. In 1944 he was imprisoned in the Lublin Castle and then shot at the Majdanek camp.

As part of the custom of giving gifts during December, students from the 5th Maria Skłodowska-Curie High School in Lublin showed an extraordinary initiative. The youth initiated their own action of preparing surprise packages for former prisoners of the Majdanek concentration camp. It is their symbolic, intergenerational expression of memory, respect, and gratitude towards people who survived World War II.

Almost two hundred relics, such as prisoners' clothes and shoes, numbers and markings, tools of terror, Judaica, devotional articles, dishes, dolls, drawings, jewellery, and art objects were seen by the participants of this year's "Witnesses of the history" series.

Within this year’s All Soul’s Day at Majdanek, on November 24, 1 p.m. an online meeting devoted to Matylda “Mata” Woliniewska will take place at the Museum’s Facebook site. The host, Anna Wójcik, will talk about Woloniewska, a former prisoner of Majdanek, KL Buchenwald, and KL Ravensbrück, with Fr. Jacek Nowak – Mata’s cousin and her close friend.

The academic seminar "The Architecture of Crime. The Topography and Infrastructure of the ‘Einsatz Reinhardt’ Camps" has ended The online seminar on November 4-5, 2021, was devoted to the logistics and organisation of the genocidal operation in the course of which the Germans established the extermination camps in Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka.

On the 78th anniversary of "Aktion Erntefest," we paid homage to the 18.000 Jewish prisoners of Majdanek and labour camps in Lublin, who were murdered in November 1943. Near the obelisk commemorating those who had lost their lives during that mass execution we laid flowers and remembrance stones.

On November 3, 1943, the German SS and police functionaries at Majdanek murdered over 18.000 prisoners of KL Lublin and labour camps in Lublin. The operation codenamed “Erntefest” (Harvest Festival) was the largest mass execution in the history of all the German Nazi concentration camps.

On October 16, 2021 the first edition of an educational session for teachers entitled “Historia Magistra Vitae est? A Participatory Visit at the State Museum at Majdanek – the Experience of Teachers and Educators.

On October 12, 2021, a group of students from the Czech Republic, Germany, Israel, and Poland participated in a one-day study visit to the State Museum at Majdanek. Their visit was organised as a part of “New Ways of Remembering Together” – an international project coordinated by the Auschwitz Jewish Centre and the Kreutzberger Initiative gegen Antisemitismus.

An armed revolt of prisoners under the leadership of Alexander Pechersky and Lejba Felhendler broke out in the German extermination camp in Sobibór on October 14, 1943.

The ordinary of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, major archbishop of Kiev Sviatoslav Shevchuk; Ukraine's minister of foreign affairs, Dmytro Kuleba; the ambassador of Ukraine to Poland Andrii Deshchytsia; several delegations of the local-government authorities from Ukraine and Poland, representatives of the diplomatic corpse and clergy, altogether paid homage to the victims of the German Nazi concentration camp at Majdanek.

The jury of the 41st Museum Event of the Year Sybilla competition 2020 granted the honourable mention to the State Museum at Majdanek for the permanent exhibition “SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor. German death camp 1942–1943.”

Holy mass in remembrance of the victims, a lecture, and paying homage at the Mausoleum – on September 19,
the Sunday of Remembrance is organised.