Pieklo XX wieku. Zbrodnia, hart ducha i milosierdz – Hell of the 20th Century. Crime, Spiritual Strength, and Grace – A detailed report on the horrors that took place day by day at the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp – Harsh testimonies of torture and mass murder of the Jews at the camp, by the President of the Polish Red Cross during the war, Ludwik Christians. Published by “Rodzina Polska, ” Warsaw 1946 – First edition. Polish. Accompanied throughout by 42 harsh photo gravure plates, hard-to-view sepia tones of prisoners during forced labor at the camp while it was operational, as well as photographs from the time of its liberation.
A horrific report on the atrocities experienced by the victims at the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp near Lublin. Written by Ludwik Christians, who served as President of the Polish Red Cross in the Lublin district from 1941 to 1944. The words presented here were written by Ludwik during the events – things he personally witnessed at the camp, testimonies of prisoners he received in writing and orally during the years the camp was operational. The dozens of written testimonies given to him are presented in the book in their exact language, without any changes. He also includes here transcripts of letters from prisoners (which never reached their recipients) that were written to their relatives during their time at the camp, from which one can also learn about the terrible suffering they endured. In May 1944, he had already finished writing and editing the entire manuscript, but the book was published a year and a half later because Ludwik was busy day and night assisting the thousands of survivors of concentration camps in the final months of the war and after, which left him no time to focus on bringing the book to print.
The author describes in detail and at length the harsh conditions under which the camp operated and the Nazi hell as witnessed by his eyes, along with countless testimonies collected during his work for the Red Cross during the war and at the time of the camp’s liberation by the Soviets in July 1944. This is one of the important sources documenting the atrocities against the Jews at the camp: “The suffering of the Jews at Majdanek is indescribable… In just a few days, 21,000 Jews who arrived from Lublin were murdered, 400 burned alive… There were days when it was impossible to walk on the roads near the camp due to the stench of burning Jewish bodies…”. He also describes the constant hunger: “Hunger that twists the intestines and dulls the senses, pure hunger of animals. As a result, after only a few weeks, the strongest man was reduced to nothing but a body covered with skin, ” the harsh cold conditions: “The cold penetrated the body, reached the bones, and tortured until the prisoner could no longer move his limbs and stopped feeling…”, the diseases that ran rampant in the camp: “The overcrowded mass of unwashed prisoners, sometimes hundreds, even thousands, in single barracks, were a breeding ground for lice… Each of the released prisoners was so infested with lice that out of fear of spreading disease-causing bacteria, we received the newcomers at the P.C.K. office in a separate room. Despite extensive precautions, lice crawled everywhere after the released group passed through, and only with special treatment were they successfully removed…. Infectious diseases were common and almost constant: typhus and dysentery. Scabies was a daily event…”. The daily tortures that led to daily deaths: “The whistle blew incessantly from morning until night for any reason… The dogs were so well-trained that they did almost everything in a frenzy… There was no measure of beating, torture, or murder. The punishment, at best, was disproportionate to the crime committed. Moreover, in a large number of cases, no effort was made to identify the offense or search for the culprit. Responsibility was generally collective…”. How the crematorium operated to burn the bodies: “Three giant piles burned simultaneously. Three columns of fire blazed with heat. The air was so saturated with the stench of the bodies being consumed by the flames that the prisoners who worked in this ‘hell’ fainted…”, and the looting of the Nazis from the victims’ clothing: “The material evidence found by the committee in the camp at Field Six and in the warehouses belonging to the Gestapo on Chopin Street in Lublin sheds bright light on the vast scale of the looting of the murdered victims… Based on testimonies from witnesses, including captured SS men who worked at the camp, a massive looting system was uncovered, aimed at using every possession of the murdered…”.
As the head of the committee that examined the atrocities that occurred at the camp, Ludwik concludes in his final remarks: “Although the Nazis used various methods to erase the traces of their brutal crimes, they did not succeed in erasing the traces of the mass killing methods used on people at the Majdanek camp or the traces of the horrific crime. Based on a detailed examination of the materials and documents collected, the special committee for investigating the German crimes committed in the city of Lublin concluded that more than one and a half million people were destroyed during the entire existence of the Majdanek camp.”
The author Ludwik Christians (1902-1956), a lawyer, politician, activist, and Polish academic. He served as President of the Polish Red Cross in the Lublin district during the war. Between 1945-1946, he served as the President of the Board of the Polish Red Cross, and later returned to his position as a lawyer.
308 [1] pages. Light stains on the cover. Good – very good condition.
