... in Majdanek itself we did not wear striped clothing. They gave us clothing of people who had been shot. We always knew how many people had worn it before by the (number of) bullet holes...
— Judith Becker (a Jewish prisoner in KL Lublin), Yad Vashem Archives 0.3-9416
Figure 1. Soviet Army photo of prisoner barracks at KL Lublin as they appeared shortly after liberation. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Courtesy of Panstwowe Muzeum na Majdanku.
While the world is focused this year on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of KL (Konzentrationslager) Auschwitz, it is important to recall that during the war there were several other concentration camps built in Poland by the Germans. Among these were camps erected primarily for extermination purposes only, e.g., Sobibor, Treblinka, Bełżec, and Chełmno, none of which were designed to have large, permanent inmate populations. KL Auschwitz was a hybrid camp, engineered both as a vast murder factory and, simultaneously, a provider of slave labor to support various war-related projects. Another combination concentration/extermination camp was built in the town of Lublin in fall of 1941. At this time, the German armed forces were fully committed to an ill-fated invasion of the Soviet Union under the code name “Operation Barbarossa.” The Russian soldiers captured in the early stages of this offensive numbered over 3 million and became a logistical nightmare for the Wehrmacht (German Army). Many of these Soviet prisoners were subsequently shot, but many were marched west into Poland and other controlled territories for internment in the German camp system. SS (Schutzstaffel) Chief Heinrich Himmler had actually drafted plans to build a prisoner camp in the eastern city of Lublin before the invasion of June 1941. This was in anticipation of the Germanization of the captured eastern territories, a process that required many workers and involved the displacement of the current inhabitants, followed by resettlement of the vacant land with German citizens. A site was chosen near the Lublin township of Majdan Tatarski, from whence was derived the name Majdanek, as the camp would be known after WWII, but the original name of the new prisoner camp was Das Konzentrationslager der Waffen-SS Lublin — The Concentration Camp of the Weapons-SS Lublin, usually shortened to KL Lublin (Figure 1). Since the end of the war, it has generally been called the Majdanek concentration camp.
Due to the large number of Soviet prisoners of war (POWs), the initial capacity of KL Lublin specified by Himmler was 50,000 inmates, with a later expansion to include an additional 200,000 inmates. Soviet and Polish POWs built the original camp and became the first permanent prisoners. Later, additional Polish POWs (mostly Jewish), political prisoners, intelligentsia, and other “undesirables” were incarcerated in the camp, similar to the permanent inmate population at KL Auschwitz. The flimsy barracks built by the Soviet prisoners were constructed of thin wooden planks that provided no insulation and had windows set in the roof. The camp was organized into numerous compounds, the functions of which would vary as the war progressed (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Map of the Majdanek concentration camp. Courtesy of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
There was also a women’s concentration camp (Frauenkonzentrationslager) established to house around 5,000 female prisoners, and a section for prisoners working in the SS-owned manufacturing factories. These were in addition to half a dozen subcamps controlled through the main camp, including the DAW (Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke — German Equipment Works) subcamp on Lindenstrasse (Lipowa) in Lublin, which is the subject of “Food packages, etc., should be addressed to Camp Lipowa 7,” published in this same issue. Prisoners from over 30 nationalities would eventually be interned in KL Lublin, including those from Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Great Britain, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. The Germans even imprisoned Italian soldiers after the surrender of Italy to the Allies. Over half of the camp’s population was represented by Poles, with Soviet prisoners making up about 20% of the total. As an extermination camp, KL Lublin was eventually equipped with two gas chambers utilizing Zyklon B and a total of seven crematoria, all fully operational by fall of 1943. These were used primarily in the “processing” of Polish Jews living in southeastern Poland. Ultimately, the camp became notorious for its harsh conditions, and especially among the Jewish prisoners, KL Lublin was considered a much worse destination than KL Auschwitz. One survivor, Jewish prisoner Rudy Vrba who was transferred from KL Lublin to Auschwitz, recounts, “Nobody who stayed in Majdanek survived.”
Overview
Like the other concentration camps under the German IKL (Inspektion der Konzentrationslager), mail both to and from the inmates in KL Lublin was officially sanctioned, as was Schutzstaffel policy. Each camp had its own set of rules and regulations regarding mail, but almost all of them allowed the non-Jewish prisoners to write and receive letters. This was in no way intended to be of benefit to the prisoners, but was instead a device used by the SS to control the inmate populations and manage public perception of the German concentration camp system. The mail system facilitated the cover story that the camps were perfectly benign and that the prisoners were well-treated. By allowing the prisoners to write censored letters, the SS furthered this illusion and at the same time used the mail system to advance their goals for mass murder.
At KL Lublin, like the other German camps, Jewish prisoners were not allowed to write or receive letters except during certain planned mail operations (Briefaktions), and prisoners who were chosen for these operations were usually murdered. These deceptive mail operations consisted of forcing inmates to write cards that were later posted outside the camps after the writers had already been sent to the gas chambers. There appears to be no surviving mail from the Soviet POWs who made up the early inmate population of KL Lublin, so it is safe to assume that they were also under a postal ban. The first mail observed in relation to KL Lublin inmates is from February 1943. Prior to this time, KL Lublin inmates (including the large initial population of Soviet POWs) were not allowed to write or receive mail, a decision likely made by the camp administration. Surviving mail sent to and from KL Lublin is not plentiful relative to some other camps in the German system, as the window between the first mail observed in February 1943 and the evacuation of the camp in July 1944 was only 17 months. Most mail sent by prisoners in KL Lublin consisted of postal cards with innocuous messages and information cards regarding the receipt of packages. Later in the camp’s history, neutral letter sheets and envelopes were also used. Other than the information cards, there was no specific preprinted stationary, i.e., containing a printed camp name, used as has been observed in other concentration camps, such as KL Auschwitz.
Outgoing Mail
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Figure 3. Generic KL postal card with CDC (circular date cancel) of March 7, 1944, sent by prisoner Stanisław Zelent to the city of Lublin.
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Figure 3. Generic KL postal card with CDC (circular date cancel) of March 7, 1944, sent by prisoner Stanisław Zelent to the city of Lublin.
The scarce generic preprinted postal card depicted in Figure 3, unusual in that it has been found used only from KL Lublin, features a standard list of IKL rules, including ones specifying the sending and receipt of letters and parcels, e.g., “Money, photographs, and pictures in letters are forbidden” and “Obscure or illegible letters will be destroyed.” The name and address of the camp are not printed on the card, but the CDC (circular date cancel) reveals its origin as Lublin. The Polish Red Cross (PCK) cachet stamped on the front, commonly seen on KL Lublin mail, was not placed by the camp administration but added later to outgoing mail by the Polish Red Cross. The PCK was mostly involved with the delivery of food parcels to KL Lublin, which was allowed by the SS in part because there was simply not enough food in the camp to support the inmate population. Why they added a cachet to outgoing mail is unknown, but the SS probably allowed it as a “seal of approval.” The PCK cachet is unique to KL Lublin. The 12 Gr (groschen) stamp paid the General Government (Generalgouvernement, the military government of the Polish-occupied territory) postal card rate.
The reverse of the card in Figure 3 features a KL Lublin censor mark. Note that the text is written in Polish, which was generally not allowed in any of the camps, as German was usually required. This deviation from IKL regulations has been observed on many KL Lublin inmate mail objects and is peculiar to this camp. It was also a privilege allowed only to political prisoners. This card was posted to the city of Lublin and written by Stanisław Zelent, a bridge and road engineer who fought first in the Polish Army and then as a partisan. He was arrested in March 1942, sent by the Gestapo (German Secret State Police) to Pawiak prison in Warsaw, and was later transferred to KL Lublin. He escaped the camp shortly before it was evacuated in 1944. Zelent was involved with the camp resistance organization, and was especially commended after the war for the aid he gave sick or injured Jewish prisoners.
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Figure 4. Information card confirming package receipt sent by a prisoner on January 22, 1944. Note the return address of Konz. Lag.der Waffen-SS Lublin I, and the use of lightning bolts in place of “SS.”
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Figure 4. Information card confirming package receipt sent by a prisoner on January 22, 1944. Note the return address of Konz. Lag.der Waffen-SS Lublin I, and the use of lightning bolts in place of “SS.”
More commonly observed from KL Lublin are information cards such as the one in Figure 4. These were generally used to confirm the receipt of packages inside the camp and inform family members outside that the prisoner was “well.” The front has a mark applied by Censor 4 and a typical cachet indicating the frequency for the sending of letters (once a month in this example) and parcels. The camp administration became more lenient about the delivery of parcels as the war progressed because of constant food shortages. The reverse is printed in Polish, and additional text was not allowed except on the blank lines. The word blacked-out in the upper left-hand corner is “Majdanek”; the strike-through of the name “Majdanek” specifically has been observed often enough on information cards that I deduce that the administration at times preferred that the camp only be called KL Lublin.
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Figure 5. Official postal card sent by female inmate Sofia Kotecka with CDC of November 25, 1943.
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Figure 5. Official postal card sent by female inmate Sofia Kotecka with CDC of November 25, 1943.
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Figure 6. Postal stationary card sent by inmate Roman Langert with CDC of December 14, 1943.
Regular official government postal cards were also used by the prisoners, as they were in most of the German camps. The card in Figure 5 was written by a female inmate and sent to the small town of Landsmierz in southern Poland. The black ink on the reverse likely indicates the date of arrival, November 28, 1943. Figure 6 shows a postal stationary card sent to Sniatyn, Kolomyia, now part of western Ukraine, but at the time within the General Government. The prisoner, Roman Langert, was born in Lviv, Ukraine, and was arrested for his involvement in the resistance movement. He was evacuated to other concentration camps before the liberation of KL Lublin but managed to survive the war.
Figure 7. Official postal card written by Jewish inmate Jarka Červinka in Majdanek Lublin I “Arbeitslager,” sent at the normal German 6 Pf rate, and cancelled on June 4, 1943, as part of an SS Briefaktion. Image from the collection of Gianfranco Moscati, Italy.
The neutral postal card in Figure 7, sent at the regular 6 Pf (pfennig) rate, was used as part of the ongoing Briefaktion des RHSA (Juden) — Mail Action of the Reich Main Security Office (Jews) — that began in August 1942 and also included Jewish inmates at KL Auschwitz. This card was written by a Jewish Czech inmate and originally addressed to a relative in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, but later was routed to a new address in Austria. The card was cancelled on June 4, 1943, and the cachet indicates that replies should be sent only to the Jewish Office in Berlin. Note that the return address is Majdanek Lublin I Arbeitslager (work camp) and does not include “KL” or “Konzentrationslager.” This is typical of Briefaktion mail, and similar return addresses are observed from KL Auschwitz using imaginary camp names such as “Arbeitslager Birkenau” (Labor Camp Birkenau) or “Am Waldsee.” The prisoner who wrote this card had likely been sent to the gas chambers well before the cancel was applied in Berlin.
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Figure 8. Generic KL lettercard with CDC of June 1, 1944, written by inmate Br(uno) Franckiewicz in subcamp (Lublin KL g.g.) Waffen SS Lindenstrasse DAW.
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Figure 8. Generic KL lettercard with CDC of June 1, 1944, written by inmate Br(uno) Franckiewicz in subcamp (Lublin KL g.g.) Waffen SS Lindenstrasse DAW.
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Figure 8. Generic KL lettercard with CDC of June 1, 1944, written by inmate Br(uno) Franckiewicz in subcamp (Lublin KL g.g.) Waffen SS Lindenstrasse DAW.
Besides information and postal cards, preprinted lettercards were also used by the prisoners in KL Lublin. Figure 8 is an example of the common preprinted lettercard used in many of the German concentration camps, written by a prisoner in subcamp Waffen SS Lindenstrasse DAW. This subcamp was originally established in Lublin as a work camp for Jews in 1939 and later came under the administration of KL Lublin. The prisoner who wrote this lettercard, Br(uno)Franckiewicz, was likely a replacement transferred to Lindenstrasse DAW from either KL Buchenwald, Dachau, or Sachsenhausen in early 1944, after the Jewish inmates of the camp were murdered in the Aktion Erntefest mass-killings. Aktion Erntefest (Operation Harvest Festival), initiated by the SS on November 3, 1943, resulted in the deaths of approximately 42,000 Jews in the Lublin area, including those in the Lindenstrasse DAW. Almost all of the Jews in Lublin were rounded up and killed during Harvest Festival; many were forced to lie in open trenches dug at one end of the main KL Lublin camp and then were machine-gunned where they lay. Loud marching music was played by the SS guards to cover up the screams. Operation Harvest Festival was the worst single day for loss of life during the Holocaust.
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Figure 9. Generic KL lettercard with CDC of July 21, 1944, one day before evacuation of KL Lublin, written by Norwegian prisoner Knud Jensen. This prisoner had previously spent time in subcamp Waffen SS Lindenstrasse DAW, but was transferred to the main camp before evacuation.
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Figure 9. Generic KL lettercard with CDC of July 21, 1944, one day before evacuation of KL Lublin, written by Norwegian prisoner Knud Jensen. This prisoner had previously spent time in subcamp Waffen SS Lindenstrasse DAW, but was transferred to the main camp before evacuation.
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Figure 10. Generic KL lettercard written by a Polish political prisoner in KL Lublin on March 13, 1944 and featuring an attached special label.
The generic lettercard in Figure 9 was written in German by a Norwegian prisoner and posted on July 21, 1944, two days before the liberation of KL Lublin by the Soviet Army. In addition to censor marks on both sides, this lettercard was also marked along the bottom front edge with a partial German OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht — High Command of the Armed Forces) censor cachet for mail addressed outside Das Reich. This is somewhat unusual, as KL Lublin was a Waffen-SS camp, and normally foreign mail would be censored through an SS Feldpost office. This lettercard has also been treated on both sides with chemical swipes to check for the presence of text written in secret ink, e.g., lemon juice, which was standard APB (Auslandsbriefprüfstellen — Foreign Mail Inspection) procedure used for foreign mail. This lettercard is currently the latest prisoner postal object observed from KL Lublin.
Figure 10 shows the inside of another example of the common KL lettercard with a special label pasted at the top. These labels are occasionally seen on concentration camp mail and are usually the result of a change in rules regarding the receipt of mail and packages. The one known special label used at KL Lublin was unusual in that it was printed in Polish on one side and German on the reverse. It lists rules regarding time periods for the sending of letters and packages, and instructions concerning packing material. This card was written in Polish, almost certainly by a political prisoner.
Incoming Mail
Figure 11. Parcel receipt for package posted to a Polish prisoner in KL Lublin, January 13, 1944. The cachet applied in the middle reads: “delivery fee paid.”
Incoming mail has also survived from KL Lublin. The parcel receipt shown in Figure 11 is a typical example of a surviving piece and is evidence of the large number of food packages delivered to the camp during its existence. The Polish Red Cross was instrumental in the negotiations that led to the camp administration allowing an expanded delivery of parcels to KL Lublin. By some estimates, between March 1943 and May 1944, over 100,000 parcels were delivered to the camp.
Cards and letters mailed to prisoners in the camp have also been observed, but far less than outgoing mail, in part because preserving letters in the harsh conditions of the camps was difficult. In some camps the prisoners had to hand in their old letters in order to receive new ones. Of particular interest is the incoming postal stationary card shown in Figure 12, which is addressed to Irena Iłłakowicz, who was a Second Lieutenant of the NSZ (National Armed Forces) Polish resistance movement and an intelligence agent (Figure 13). Both Irena and her husband Jerzy Iłłakowicz joined the Polish resistance movement in 1939 and spent the next several years dodging the Gestapo in Poland, with Irena adopting the nom de guerre “Barbara Zawisza.” She was eventually arrested by the Gestapo on October 7, 1942, and sent to Pawiak prison in Warsaw.
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Figure 12. Incoming postal stationary card addressed to prisoner Irena Iłłakowicz with city of Lublin CDC of February 23, 1943, and no return address. This card was written in Polish by her mother and probably posted in Lublin by partisan operatives to protect her whereabouts from the Gestapo. The censor mark confirms that the card was accepted into the camp.
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Figure 12. Incoming postal stationary card addressed to prisoner Irena Iłłakowicz with city of Lublin CDC of February 23, 1943, and no return address. This card was written in Polish by her mother and probably posted in Lublin by partisan operatives to protect her whereabouts from the Gestapo. The censor mark confirms that the card was accepted into the camp.
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Irena Iłłakowicz, code-name: “Barbara.” Courtesy of Archiwum i Muzeum Pomorskie Armii Krajowej oraz Wojskowej Służby Polek, the Pomeranian Archives and Museum of the Home Army and the Military Service of Polish Women.
Because of the dangers associated with Pawiak, her husband bribed the guards there and had her transferred into a group of non-political prisoners being sent to KL Lublin, thus deflecting attention from her intelligence activities. Sometime after receiving the card in Figure 12, Irena made a daring escape from the camp with the help of a group of NSZ partisans. Using falsified documents and Gestapo uniforms, they brazenly came to the camp gates and demanded custody of prisoner Irena Iłłakowicz for transport back to Warsaw and further interrogation. It is highly likely that the card in Figure 12 was in Irena’s pocket as she walked out the main gate; otherwise, its survival is difficult to explain. Irena then resumed her work with the NSZ, becoming involved with surveillance operations against the Soviets, who planned to bring all of Poland under their control after the war. On October 4, 1943, Irena was murdered in Warsaw at age 37, possibly by the NKVD (Soviet secret police) or the PPR (Polish Workers Party). Her husband and mother, to avoid identification and arrest by Gestapo agents, attended her funeral disguised as cemetery workers.
Liberation
Fight and Martyrdom designed by Auschwitz survivor Wiktor Tolkin and built on grounds of Majdanek State Museum in 1969. Photo credit to Lukas Plewnia, courtesy www.polen-heute.de.
On July 23, 1944, KL Lublin was liberated by elements of the 8th Tank Corps of the Red Army (Figure 14). Evacuation of the main camp and the subcamps had begun several months earlier, with prisoners dispersed by rail transport to KL Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Gross Rosen, Natzweiler, Plaszow, and Ravensbrück. There were only about 500 Soviet POWs left in the camp at liberation. This was the first German concentration camp liberated during the war, and the Russians were mystified as to its function, believing that they had liberated a simple POW camp.
The exact number of people killed at KL Lublin is still controversial, with estimates ranging from 78,000 to 300,000 or more. Because many Jews killed in the gas chambers were never officially registered into the camp, it is impossible to establish the actual death toll, but it was clearly significant for a camp that operated for only three years. Currently, the best-accepted estimate is 79,000, of which 59,000 were Jewish. At least half the camp, including some of the original crematoria, is still standing today, and in 2016 the Majdanek State Museum received over 200,000 visitors.
It is important to recognize that each of the KL Lublin postal objects shown in this article is bound up with the fate of a single individual. We know for certain that some of these prisoners did not survive the war. These cards and letters typically reside in family archives for many years, and then, for a variety of reasons, find their way to the philatelic market or the occasional museum. Not surprisingly, I have found that the best custodians of this material are stamp collectors, who seem to have an innate appreciation of the important history they embody. Letters from prisoners interned in the German concentration camps are like small bits of stone that, when combined, help form a large bedrock of evidence of Nazi crimes committed during the twelve-year reign of the “Thousand-Year Reich.”
References and Further Reading
Lørdahl, Erik. German Concentration Camps, 1933–1945, History and Inmate Mail (Tårnåsen, Norway: War and Philabooks Ltd.; Version 6, 2012).
Marsałek, Józef. Majdanek: the Concentration Camp in Lublin (Warsaw: Verlag Interpress; 1986).
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Weinmann, Martin. Das nationalsozialistische Lagersystem (Frankfurt/M., Germany: Verlag Zweitausendeins; 1990).
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Editor's Note: The column was published in the April 2020 issue of The American Philatelist. We are bringing the archives of The American Philatelist to the Newsroom - stay tuned for more columns and articles from 2020, and read the full April issue here.