Majdanek Public Execution: Nazi Perpetrators Hanged at Concentration Camp in 1944

The Majdanek public execution in 1944 saw Nazi perpetrators hanged at the site of their crimes in one of the earliest war crimes trials of World War II. Majdanek was one of the first Nazi concentration and extermination camps liberated during the Second World War, and its intact gas chambers, crematorium, and mass graves revealed the scale of the Holocaust in Poland to the world. Located on the outskirts of Lublin, Majdanek became a central site of terror under the SS, where tens of thousands of Jews, Poles, Soviet POWs, and other prisoners were murdered through shootings, starvation, forced labor, and Zyklon B gas.Just months after liberation, the first major trial of Nazi camp personnel took place here. Six members of the Majdanek staff — SS officers and German kapos — were captured, tried, and sentenced under the August Decree of 1944, one of the earliest legal efforts to prosecute war crimes in occupied Europe. Their crimes included operating the gas chambers, managing Zyklon B supplies, overseeing executions, beating prisoners, and participating directly in selections and mass killings. On December 3, 1944, five of the convicted men were publicly hanged near the crematorium in front of thousands of witnesses. One kapo, Edmund Pohlmann, avoided execution by committing suicide in his cell. The trial and execution were unprecedented: swift, public, and symbolically carried out at the site where these men had committed their crimes. Survivors, civilians, and Red Army soldiers witnessed justice delivered just meters from the gas chambers where so many had perished. This documentary explores Majdanek’s role in the Holocaust, the trial of its guards, and the first public execution of Nazi war criminals on Polish soil.This episode is part of the series WW2 Mass Public Executions.Watch the full documentary and explore hundreds of historical films at:WorldHistory.tv