The first episode focuses on the photograph taken in the spring of 1943. It show a general view of a sentry tower, the gas chambers hidden underneath the canopy.
History in the Background
A series of short clips in which we analyse the archival photographs from the time of the camp’s functioning and the first years of the Museum.
A photograph is just a fracture of time captured in a second, but very often some important details hide barely noticeable in the background.
In the “History in the Background” series we focus exactly on those easy-to-miss details and describe the broader historical context of photographs. We will also hint on how to look at archival visual sources to extract more information. This project is addressed to researchers and also to everyone who wants to learn how to read photographs. Watch very carefully!
The second episode of the series focuses on the photograph depicting the SS barracks and prisoner field I.
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Welcome everyone. My name is Krzysztof Tarkowski, and I'd like to
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invite you to watch the second installment of our series,
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"History in the Background". In this series, we'd like to show you some rather well-known
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photographs from our archives, but we'd like to draw your
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attention to what's happening in the background of these photographs,
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to show the history in the background.
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State Museum at Majdanek presents
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History in the Background ep. 2
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Today we would like to present the photo entitled
"View of the Wachbataillon and field I".
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In the spring of 1943, the barracks for the SS staff
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were already under construction. More than half of
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the camp command barracks and some of the barracks for the SS barracks were built. Although
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only two of them are visible in the presented photo. However, the first field is clearly visible. Thanks to the fact that the barracks for
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the female overseers had not been built yet and it does not obstruct the view.
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[Field I]
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However, we are more interested in what is happening in the background of the photo, in a sense behind
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the scenes of history. And a lot is happening. First of all, we can see a great panorama
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of southern Lublin, starting from the
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Primary School No. 1 on Bychawska Street, now Kunickiego Street, then occupied by the Germans, through three
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buildings of the Polish tobacco monopoly, also occupied by the Germans, to
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the elevator built for the army in 1933 - a grain warehouse on
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Wrotkowska Street. Further on, we see a tenement house on the site of the
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southern camp, No. 1 and 2, i.e., the barracks in the southern part
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of Lublin, and even a tenement house at 5 Wojenna Street.
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And again we return a little closer to the camp. Here we see barracks number 39 -
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since February 1943, the workplace of, among others, Anton Thumann, head of
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the labor department. Next to it, barracks number 40, a guard tower, and... unexpectedly,
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we encounter finishing work on the construction of a shelter over the gas chambers.
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Please note that in the photo, the entire supporting structure of the shelter is already standing,
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while work is underway on the roof covering and formwork for the large roof. The shelter measured
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20 by 60 meters and covered an area of approximately 1,200 square meters.
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Here we can see that the covering on the northwestern side is already finished,
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covering two-thirds of the roof. However, the photographer took this photo when the eastern part
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of the shelter was not yet covered. Only thanks to this, we can see the bright spot
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of the eastern wall of the gas chamber bunker.
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What is no less interesting is the smoke rising from the shelter. Looking at it
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without a detailed Analysis suggests we're unsure whether this smoke rising so high
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could originate from a point within the camp.
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Yet we're mistaken. We're close to this smoke, and looking at the photo,
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we're sort of walking under it; or rather, it, this smoke, is moving towards us.
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If we shift our gaze back to the city skyline, we can easily
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see smoke from the city's chimneys, breweries, and factories, blown by the wind in
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a direction close to the south, while our smoke is weakly blown
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eastward. This is because the smoke in question
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most likely originates from the corpse-burning sites at the corner of present-day Wilcza
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and Grochowskiego Streets.
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This drifting of smoke, or the persistence of fog, is a unique phenomenon still
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present in the Lublin landscape today. Wilcza Street runs through Stary
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Jar, a transverse depression that encompasses not only
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the small area of Kośminek but also extends beyond the Majdanek monument. In this
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photo, the smoke moves along this depression, almost unaffected by
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the wind. Only at a higher altitude will it be dispersed by the wind. For
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now, the smoke is still too low in the photo.
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And finally, three more objects from the photo. The first is a shooting range
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built on the site of the SS riding stable.
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Here, we see it about 10 days earlier than in the previously discussed photo. The
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earthen ramparts protecting this structure are not yet as even and
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finishing work is still underway. The same is true for the camp greenhouse behind them,
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where we can still see the last two windowless window recesses. And the last object in the photo is the building that housed
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the Majdanek camp radio station in 1942.
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From this building, radio telegrams were sent to
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the headquarters in Oranienburg, including information about the camp's daily headcount reports.
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Thank you very much for your attention, and see you in the next episode.