On October 1, 1942, the first female prisoners arrived at Majdanek. The date marks the creation of Frauenkonzentrationslager [FKL] – the women’s concentration camp established at prisoner field V. The first women imprisoned at Majdanek were the Polish prisoners displaced from two districts of Lublin – Wieniawa and Dziesiąta, as well as from the Goraj settlement, and the Jewish inmates deported from the ghettos in Bełżyce and the ghetto at Majdan Tatarski in Lublin.

Directly upon their arrival at Majdanek, women were subjected to the camp admission process – there personal belongings and clothes were taken away, their personal data was written in the camp files, and they were assigned with prisoner numbers that were meant to replace their identities. Although the registration process was identical to both women and men, the authorities of KL Lublin held a separate record and introduced a separate pool of prisoner numbers for females. The children deported to Majdanek were registered together with their mothers under the exact same number. All the newcomers were also subjected to the brutal and humiliating bathing and disinfection – an obligatory stage of the camp admission process. For the female deportees it was a particularly painful experience, as they were forced to undress in front of the SS-men and the prisoners employed as the staff of the bathhouse barracks. In her testimony, Jadwiga Węgrzecka describes her traumatic experience of bathing:

One of the first things that shocked us entirely was the necessity to strip, right under the eyes of that whole personnel. They were all males, mostly the Germans, though there were also a few prisoners there. Resistance was our first, automatic reaction – we did not want to strip, though we had to do so eventually, because they started to yell and beat us.

After the bathing and disinfection, women had to get dressed very rapidly. The clothes taken from the camp storehouses were distributed randomly, with no attention paid to sizes or the current weather conditions. Then, the SS-men would escort the newly admitted females to the field of the women’s camp. Initially it was established at field V and in September 1943, it was relocated to field I. Just like men, the female prisoners were fully subjected to the regime imposed by the camp authorities. They were forced to attend the everyday roll-calls and were exploited in the exhausting obligatory labour. The layout of field V and the living conditions inside its barracks were very similar to those at the other field of the camp for men. When the first females arrived at Majdanek in October 1942, the barracks at field V were still under construction and they lacked even the most basic sanitary appliances.

Janina Raus was among the women deported to Majdanek on October 1, 1942. In her testimony she describes her displacement and the first moments spent behind the barbed wires of the camp:

Early in the morning; the Germans surrounded the whole Wieniawa quarter. They ordered everyone to leave their homes and gather at the square. They announced that all who refuse to abandon their apartments would be executed. Sheer panic broke out inside the homes. People were hastily packing whatever they could before marching off to the rally point. We took our bags and walked to the square. It was swarming with fully armed Germans dressed in green-and-grey uniforms. Between 2 and 3 p.m. some trucks arrived at the square, and everyone was forced to climb onto the back of the lorries. We were taken to Majdanek, where our names were registered near the bathhouse. Women were placed at field V and for some time were allowed to keep their clothes. Men were placed at field IV and they were all wearing striped uniforms. I could see my husband across the barbed wire fence. We were employed at the camp maintenance and were forced to carry desks. The barracks at field V were still under construction at that time.

On October 7, 1942, the first female overseers arrived at the German Nazi concentration camp in Lublin. They were transferred from KL Ravensbrück at the request of Majdanek’s commandant. The first women employed as the future FKL personnel reported at the camp nearly a week after the first female prisoners were detained at field V.

The head female overseer (Oberaufseherin) was in charge of the women’s camp and across the entire history of Majdanek this position was held by Elsa Ehrich. Although she was formally subjected directly to the camp commandant, her duties and tasks enforced close cooperation with Abteilung II (Political Department) and Abteilung III (Prisoner Camp). Elsa Ehrich, together with her deputy Hermine Braunsteiner, were responsible for holding the everyday roll-calls and assigning the female prisoners to the labour groups. In May 1943, Braunsteiner was promoted to the rank of Rapportführerin and was put in charge of the FKL’s chancellery offices. The admission of newcomers and overseeing the files and records of detained women were among her primary duties.

Among the female overseers who arrived at Majdanek on October 7, 1942, there were Elisabeth Ernst, Anna Meinel, Erna Pfannstiel, and Charlotte Webber. On October 15, Charlotte Wöllert and Hildegard Lächert were additionally transferred. An overall of around 30 female overseers were employed by the commandant’s offices of the Majdanek concentration camp. Each was obliged to undergo a special training course in KL Ravensbrück. They primary duties of SS-Aufseherinnen, as the female guards were officially referred to in the camp files, included maintaining order and control over the women’s camp, as well as overseeing the labour groups in which the female prisoners were employed. During the spring of 1944, all the SS-Aufseherinnen remaining at Majdanek were transferred to other concentration camps, including KL Auschwitz and KL Plaszow.