Majdanek was a completely different experience than Auschwitz-Birkenau. While Majdanek does not compare in size or in the amount of people murdered on its premises, the way in which they were murdered was. On November 3, 1943, over 18,000 prisoners were taken to a field near the top of the hill Majdanek seems to be on, and were shot in mass graves dug by prisoners only days before. This day is known as Aktion Erntefest. The bodies later had to be exhumed and were burned in the nearby crematoria.
At the top of this hill near the crematoria now lies the mausoleum where the ashes of the victims reside. The moment of seeing this, seeing this huge pile of ashes with pieces of bone still clearly visible, was so unreal. It hit me in a way much differently than Auschwitz. In Birkenau, I knew the ashes of over a million people were all around me. I knew they were all over the ground, that there had been pits of ashes...
But with Majdanek.... The ashes were in front of me. Right there. All in one spot.
I said to Spenser, I understand battlefields and the commemoration of them, knowing people died there. Even places like Gettysburg with the huge amounts of casualties. Normandy. Antietam.
But these camps are like the battlegrounds of humanity. They remind us of the senselessness that caused millions of lives to be taken. Innocents who did nothing wrong but be from a certain nationality or religion. These places are places where the battle of humanity, the battle of good and evil, or wrong and right, were fought and eventually an inhumane ideology that can only be viewed as insane by many of us won out, in the biggest tragedy and horror we can imagine.
It's hard to believe it's been 70 years since this war ended; 68 years ago people were murdered so ruthlessly in the places I now walk through as a historian, hoping I can add something to our understanding of these places.
Katrina Stack
At the top of this hill near the crematoria now lies the mausoleum where the ashes of the victims reside. The moment of seeing this, seeing this huge pile of ashes with pieces of bone still clearly visible, was so unreal. It hit me in a way much differently than Auschwitz. In Birkenau, I knew the ashes of over a million people were all around me. I knew they were all over the ground, that there had been pits of ashes...
But with Majdanek.... The ashes were in front of me. Right there. All in one spot.
I said to Spenser, I understand battlefields and the commemoration of them, knowing people died there. Even places like Gettysburg with the huge amounts of casualties. Normandy. Antietam.
But these camps are like the battlegrounds of humanity. They remind us of the senselessness that caused millions of lives to be taken. Innocents who did nothing wrong but be from a certain nationality or religion. These places are places where the battle of humanity, the battle of good and evil, or wrong and right, were fought and eventually an inhumane ideology that can only be viewed as insane by many of us won out, in the biggest tragedy and horror we can imagine.
It's hard to believe it's been 70 years since this war ended; 68 years ago people were murdered so ruthlessly in the places I now walk through as a historian, hoping I can add something to our understanding of these places.
Katrina Stack