Although in the autumn of 1941 construction works at Majdanek were being carried out by the Jewish prisoners from the Lublin labour camp at Lipowa Street and the Jews from Lublin, the victims forced to work were not prisoners of KL Lublin itself. However, after the fiasco of plans to use large groups of Soviet POWs as labourers, from December 1941 to January 1942 several hundred Jews from Lublin and nearby towns were deported to Majdanek. When from the end of March 1942 large transports of Jews began to arrive at the camp, only a small group of Soviet POWs and functionary prisoners remained alive. This inflow continued with varying intensity until the spring of 1944.

Mass deportations of Jews to the Lublin region – as a result of the Wannsee conference – began in mid-March. They were synchronised with the onset of the genocidal operation codenamed “Einsatz Reinhardt.” The first transports from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and the Reich were directed to Izbica, which had been designated as one of the so-called transit ghettos. Additionally, under the arrangements between the German authorities and the Slovak government, deportations of Jews from that satellite state began at the end of the month. Until the beginning of April, about 4,500 male victims were sent to Majdanek through collective camps (Žilina, Sereď, Nováky), which marked the beginning of a mass influx of Jews. From that moment, almost incessantly until November 1943, they constituted the largest group of prisoners detained in the facility. Soon, Czech Jews would also be brought from the collective ghetto in Terezín, as well as Austrian and German Jews. Until the creation of the women's field in autumn 1942, KL Lublin served solely as a men's camp. Transports of entire families arriving at that time in Lublin were subjected to selections on the ramp of the nearby Flugplatz camp, located at the premises of the former airplane factory at Wrońska Street. From there, small groups of several dozen to several hundred prisoners deemed “fit for labour” were sent to Majdanek. Other people, including women with children, were deported to transit ghettos, such as the aforementioned Izbica, but also Piaski, or Rejowiec, from which some Polish Jews had already been sent to extermination facilities. From the beginning of June 1942, most of them would be sent directly to the Sobibór camp. The only transport sent from Prague underwent selection on June 12. It was organised in retaliation for the assassination of the head of the Reich’s Main Security Office, and the deputy protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich, that had been carried out by Czechoslovakian commandos. Until mid-June, when deportations to the Lublin region were suspended due to the preparations for the offensive on the Eastern Front, nearly 80,000 Jews from outside the General Government (GG) were brought there. Of this group, 10,000 were imprisoned in KL Lublin, including about 7,600 Slovak Jews. Less numerous groups of Jews from outside of German-occupied Poland would also reach Majdanek in the autumn of 1942 and spring of 1943, together with Polish Jews from the Lublin region. From February to March 1943, smaller transports of Jews were sent into the camp, including those of Dutch and French origin that were accepted during the selections at the ramp in Sobibór.

Mass transports of Polish Jews began arriving in KL Lublin from April 20, 1942, when about 3,000 Lublin Jews were deported from the ghetto at Majdan Tatarski. They survived the earlier “displacement” from the ghetto in Podzamcze to the death camp in Bełżec. After the selection at Majdanek, only a small group of men were allowed to stay in the camp, while the remaining victims were murdered in the nearby Krępiec forest. Shortly thereafter, several thousand Jews from the Biłgoraj, Krasnystaw, and Lublin counties were sent to KL Lublin as well. The selections would already be carried out during “displacement operations,” and such method was also used during the autumn deportations. In one transport in mid-May, several hundred men from Bełżyce and Chodel were brought to the camp. About 1,000 German Jews from Thuringia would subsequently be resettled in their place.

On July 19, 1942, Himmler ordered that the extermination of the Jewish population in the General Government must be completed by December 31. Only the essential workers who were to remain alive and be relocated to several “collective camps.” KL Lublin was to become one of them. Between August and September, before the autumn deportations from the Lublin region to Majdanek resumed, over 3,000 men from the Warsaw Ghetto had been brought to the facility. However, it was only a fraction of about 300,000 Jews deported from the city to the extermination camp in Treblinka during the Grossaktion Warschau [Eng.: Great Action]. In addition, from October to November several thousand Jews, including women, were sent to KL Lublin from the Krasnystaw, Lublin, and Radzyń counties. These operations ended with the deportation of about 3,000 Jews from the liquidated ghetto in Majdan Tatarski to the camp. Most of them would be registered as prisoners, while several hundred people deemed “unfit for labour” were murdered in the recently built gas chambers. At the turn of November and December 1942, more than 1,000 Jews were brought from other camps and labour facilities in Lublin, some of whom would be sent back to their home quarters after their registration. Soon, the deportations were suspended again, but by that time most of the Jews in the General Government had been murdered, while the survivors remained in captivity in the camps and the several remaining ghettos.

The largest influx of Jews to Majdanek occurred between the end of April and the beginning of September 1943. At that time, tens of thousands of people from the liquidated ghettos in Warsaw and Białystok as well as the last clusters of the Jewish population in the Lublin region were deported. Thousands of Warsaw Jews were also sent to labour camps in Poniatowa and Trawniki, while those from Białystok were sent similarly via Flugplatz to camps in the Radom district. The concentration of Jews in the Lublin region was related to the development of the economic potential of the SS, which would be managedr by the SS Ostindustrie GmbH (Eng.: East Industry, abbreviated as Osti), a company established several months earlier.

In mid-May, 17,527 Jewish women and men would be imprisoned in the camp. This constituted the highest number in the history of Majdanek. One of the survivors, despite the sustained wound, was Israel Gutman, an outstanding Holocaust historian. He was a member of Hashomer Hatzair and the Jewish Combat Organization (Pol.: Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ŻOB). A few weeks later he was taken to Auschwitz along with some other Jews. Those who remained at Majdanek, similarly to the other Lublin camps, were murdered in a mass execution on November 3, 1943, codenamed operation “Erntefest” (“Harvest Festival”). Most of around 18,000 its victims were Polish Jews, predominantly from Warsaw and Bialystok, although Jews from outside of German-occupied Poland were also among them. Only about 600 Jewish women and men were spared from this mass execution, and were meant to be exterminated later. It caused a total change in the ethnic structure of prisoners, in which those of Polish origin began to dominate.

The last transports with less numerous groups of Jewish victims would arrive at Majdanek from mid-December 1943 to the beginning of June 1944 both from KL Auschwitz and labour camps in the Radom and Lublin districts. At that time, entire families with children, as well as several dozen women survivors of the “Erntefest” operation in Trawniki would be deported to the facility. Only the members of the Sonderkommando from KL Auschwitz were killed immediately upon their arrival. As a result of the evacuation of KL Lublin conducted from March to July 1944, the surviving Jews, including most of the survivors of the “Erntefest” operation, were relocated to other camps.

During the entire period of Majdanek's functioning, no fewer than 74,000 Jews, mainly of Polish origin, passed through the facility. Of this ethnic group of prisoners, at least 59,000 died or were murdered, while the remaining ones were deported to other camps. Only a handfulof them lived to survive the war.