• Camp Establishment Order

    During his visit to Lublin, the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler entrusted the local commander of the SS and police forces Odilo Globocnik the task of creating a camp for 25,000-50,000 prisoners, who were to be exploited as labourers for the SS and police workshops and construction sites.
    Plans and documentation were compiled by the Zentralbauleitung der Waffen-SS und Polizei (central construction office), who acted as the investor and supervisor of all construction works. The organisational matters on behalf of the Concentration Camps Inspectorate were entrusted to Karl Otto Koch, then the commandant of KL Buchenwald and the future commandant of KL Lublin.

  • First Camp Construction Works

    The formal basis for starting the camp construction works was laid on 22 September 1941 by Hans Kammler, who was responsible for construction matters in the central SS command. The proper works were preceded by another order he gave on 27 September, which assumed the creation of POW camps in Lublin and Auschwitz on 1 October, which would have the capacity of admitting 50,000 POWs.

  • First Deportations

    The first large group of Majdanek prisoners were the Soviet POWs deported in October 1941. Shortly afterwards, interpreters, physicians, and functionary prisoners were transferred from other concentration camps including Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, and Sachsenhausen.
    On 12 December the first 150 Jewish inmates from Lublin were detained, and then also several hundred farmers from the Lublin region arrested as hostages for violating occupational laws and not providing obligatory quotas for the German army.