Operation Harvest Festival

Operation Harvest Festival (Template:Langx) was the murder of up to 43,000 Jews at the Majdanek, Poniatowa and Trawniki concentration camps by the SS, the Order Police battalions, and the Ukrainian Sonderdienst on 3–4 November 1943.

After a series of Jewish uprisings in ghettos and extermination camps, Heinrich Himmler ordered the murder of the remaining Jewish forced laborers in the Lublin District of German-occupied Poland. Jewish laborers in the camps had to dig zigzag trenches, supposedly for air defense, in late October. Thousands of SS and police personnel arrived in Lublin on 2 November. That day, SS and Police Leader Jakob Sporrenberg, who was in charge of the operation, held a conference to plan it.

The killings began on the morning of 3 November at Majdanek, where Jewish prisoners were separated from non-Jewish prisoners, and encompassed the Lipowa 7 and Lublin airfield camps, which imprisoned Jews in the city. A total of 18,400 people were shot by the early evening. The same day, 6,000 people were murdered at Trawniki, including some from Dorohucza. After finishing the Majdanek operation, several of the involved units proceeded to Poniatowa, where they murdered the camp's 14,500 prisoners on 4 November. In all three camps, Jews were forced to strip naked and walk into the previously dug trenches, where they were shot. Loud music was played to cover the sound of gunfire.

After the operation, about 10,000 Jews were left alive in various labor camps in the Lublin District. The bodies of the victims were burned by other Jews, who had been spared temporarily from death. With around 40,000 victims, Operation Harvest Festival was the largest single massacre of Jews by German forces during the Holocaust.

Background

Forced-labor camps in the General Governorate; those affected by Operation Harvest Festival are in the upper right.

In 1942, 360,000 of the Jews who lived in the Lublin District of the General Governorate of German-occupied Poland were murdered during Operation Reinhard. By the end of the year, only 20,000 Jews were living in German camps and ghettos and no more than another 20,000 were in hiding.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Beginning in January 1943, Jews launched a series of revolts in the General Governorate, including those at Warsaw Ghetto, Białystok Ghetto, and Treblinka extermination camp, while anti-Nazi partisan activity was increasing throughout the area.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Although the proximate reason for ordering Harvest Festival is unknown, historians believe that it was in response to the uprising at Sobibór extermination camp on 14 October 1943.Template:Sfn Thousands of the Jewish prisoners in the camps of the Lublin District had been transported there from the Warsaw Ghetto after the failure of the uprising there.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

To avoid further resistance, Heinrich Himmler decided to exterminate the Jewish prisoners at the Lublin camps in a single decisive blow using overwhelming military force.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn Himmler ordered Friedrich Krüger, Higher SS and Police Leader in the General Governorate, to carry out the mass murder operation; Krüger delegated it to SS and Police Leader Jakob Sporrenberg, who had recently succeeded Odilo Globocnik.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn Jewish inmates were ordered to dig zigzag trenches along the perimeter of Majdanek, Poniatowa, and Trawniki concentration camps. At Majdanek, the trenches were dug by a team of 300 prisoners working in three shifts in field 5, south of the crematorium, and measured about Template:Convert long, Template:Convert deep and Template:Convert wide. Although the trenches were supposedly for defense against air raids, and their zigzag shape granted some plausibility to this lie, the prisoners guessed their true purpose.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

On 2 November, 2,000 to 3,000 SS and police personnel arrived in Lublin: Waffen-SS from as far away as Kraków, Police Regiment 22, Police Regiment 25 (including Reserve Police Battalion 101), and the Lublin Security Police. That evening, Sporrenberg convened a meeting between his own staff, the commandants of Majdanek, Trawniki, and Poniatowa, local Security Police commander Template:Ill, and the commanders of the various units.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The murder operation, due to begin at dawn the next day, was planned as a military operation, with the code name Erntefest ("Harvest Festival").Template:Sfn Two loudspeakers, installed on police cars, were positioned at Majdanek, one near the trenches and the other by the entrance of the camp.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The leadership of the Lipowa 7 camp in Lublin, which held Jewish prisoners of war, queried Himmler as to whether they should violate the Geneva Convention by allowing the prisoners to be executed. Himmler's aide, Werner Grothmann, replied that "all Jews without exception are subject to liquidation".Template:Sfn

Killings

Majdanek

Camp 5 is the rectangle to the lower left in this map of Majdanek.

At 5:00 on 3 November 1943, prisoners at Majdanek were awoken as usual in the dark, but the camp had been surrounded by an additional 500 soldiers during the night.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn The 3,500 to 4,000 Jewish prisonersTemplate:Sfn lived among non-Jewish prisoners. After morning roll call, the groups were separated, with Jews ordered to go to camp 5.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Jews in the infirmary were trucked to that location, while the non-Jewish prisoners at camp 5 were moved to camp 4. The barbed wire fence was repositioned to include the execution area within the cordon. Prisoners were forced to undress and driven in groups of one hundredTemplate:Sfn to the three trenches in the field beyond the camp.Template:Sfn At the beginning of a ramp leading to the trenches, the Jews were separated into groups of ten and forced onward to the trenches.Template:Sfn Execution squads of 10–12 men each from police battalions and 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking were waiting,Template:Sfn and were replaced every few hours. The prisoners were forced to lie down in the trenches and were shot in the nape of the neck.Template:Sfn

About 600 prisoners, half men and half women, were selected at the Lublin airfield camp to clean up after the massacre at Majdanek. The rest, approximately 5,000 or 6,000,Template:Sfn along with 2,500 Jewish prisoners of war at Lipowa 7, were marched toward Majdanek.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Despite being heavily guarded,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn the Jewish prisoners of war rushed their guards and tried to escape, reportedly shouting "Niech żyje wolność!" (Long live freedom!) Almost all were shot before they could get away.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The first prisoners from the other camps arrived at Majdanek around 7:30 and continued to arrive throughout the morning.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Among the Jews from Majdanek, some tried to escape their fate through suicide or by hiding in the barracks. The next day, twenty-three Jews were discovered and were executed at the Majdanek crematorium.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The speakers, which had been installed the previous day, were turned on as soon as the gunfire started, but it could still be heard.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Local Poles watched from the rooftops of nearby buildings outside the camp,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn while Sporrenberg observed from a Fieseler Storch airplane.Template:Sfn It is not clear who directed the operation as it was ongoing; it may have been Sporrenberg or Hermann Höfle.Template:Sfn The killing continued, uninterrupted until around 17:00Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn and by then all 18,400 prisoners had been murdered.Template:Sfn

Trawniki

Previous to the operation, Polish residents who lived adjacent to the camp were forced to move and those who lived a bit farther away were forced to stay in their homes. Jewish prisoners who lived in the settlement outside the camp proper were returned to the camp. At 5:00 on 3 November, the prisoners were mustered for roll call,Template:Sfn rounded up, and marched to the Hiwi training camp, where loudspeakers were playing music beside the trenches. The victims were ordered to disrobe and place their clothing in piles, then to lie face down on top of those already shot, and the executioner would dispatch them by a shot to the nape of the neck.Template:Sfn Men were shot before women and children.Template:Sfn The shooting was already well underway when prisoners from Dorohucza arrived by rail at 7:00.Template:Sfn After the trenches were filled, some Jews were executed at a sand pit in the labor camp.Template:Sfn The execution of 6,000 Jews occurred continuously until 15:00 (or 17:00),Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn with only a few managing to hide and survive.Template:Sfn

Poniatowa

Many of the SS and police soldiers who had been at Majdanek continued to Poniatowa, about Template:Convert distant, after the massacre had finished.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The units participating in the massacre at Poniatowa included Reserve Police Battalion 101,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Motorized Gendarmerie Battalion 1, Police Battalion 41, and Police Battalion 67.Template:Sfn There were 14,800 Jews at the camp before the massacre,Template:Sfn most of them having come from the Warsaw Ghetto.Template:Sfn On 3 November, the Jews were sent back to their barracks after roll call.Template:Sfn The camp was sealed and telephone lines were cut, so that the prisoners would not know what fate awaited them.Template:Sfn Some thought that there was going to be a selection, and tried to make themselves look healthier.Template:Sfn That evening, the camp was surrounded by 1,000–1,500 German and Ukrainian soldiers,Template:Sfn who formed three concentric security cordons around the camp by morning.Template:Sfn

The next morning (4 November), at 4:30, the prisoners were awoken for roll call.Template:Sfn Most were held in Hall 3, except 200 prisoners who were temporarily spared at the insistence of commandant Gottlieb Hering, to clean up after the massacre. They were locked in the camp kitchen. Policemen searched the barracks and factory for anyone who was hiding, and then stood guard on both sides of the Template:Ill (main avenue) in the camp. Prisoners were ordered to strip naked, hand over all valuables, and walk down the Lagerstrasse in groups of 50, starting with the men.Template:Sfn As loud music blared, the prisoners were herded to the two trenches by the entrance of the camp, Template:Convert long, Template:Convert wide, and Template:Convert deep.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn One soldier stood at the beginning of the trench with a whip to encourage the Jews to immediately lie down on top of the bodies of those who had already been shot. Two shooters stood on each of the long sides of the trench, shooting alternately at the victims, each equipped with a bottle of schnapps and an assistant to reload their weapons.Template:Sfn According to a witness, many of the victims were not killed and lay wounded in the trench as more bodies piled on top of them, cursing the SS.Template:Sfn

Around 14:00, the executions were halted for a lunch break and the drunk executioners were relieved. The trenches turned out to be too shallow and bloody corpses spilled out of the edges.Template:Sfn Some prisoners in Poniatowa had formed a resistance group and had acquired a few weapons. At 18:00, a group of around 100 Jews set fire to some barracks full of clothing and then barricaded themselves in another barracks. The Germans set this on fire, killing all of the resistance members.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Polish fire fighters were brought in to put out the fires and observed the Germans throwing wounded Jews into the flames.Template:Sfn The executions finished around 17:00.Template:Sfn Afterward, German soldiers checked the trenches, executing survivors.Template:Sfn The corpses were sprinkled with lime and covered with fir branches.Template:Sfn Three women survived, climbed out of the mass grave that night, and survived the war with the help of Żegota.Template:Sfn Overall, 14,500 people were killed within the span of a few hours.Template:Sfn

Coverup

List of Jewish prisoners working at the camp office at Trawniki. All were murdered on 3 November.

Removing all traces of the killing was a priority of the Nazi leadership because of Soviet military victories on the Eastern Front.Template:Sfn After the German defeat at Stalingrad, Soviet forces recaptured most of Ukraine, Russia, and eastern Belarus by the end of 1943.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> At Majdanek, the cleanup took two months and was done under the supervision of Erich Muhsfeldt, previously an executioner at Auschwitz.Template:Sfn The 600 men and women from the airfield campTemplate:Sfn had to sort the clothing of the Jews murdered at Majdanek.Template:Sfn Then, the women were deported to Auschwitz and killed in the gas chambers.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The men had to cremate the bodies, and they were either killedTemplate:Sfn or recruited into Sonderkommando 1005.Template:Sfn Witnesses recalled that for months, the stench of burning flesh hung around the vicinity.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The ditches were filled with soil and leveled.Template:Sfn

The Jews at Milejowo concentration camp were sent to Trawniki on 5 November to clean up the massacre. Six women had to work in the kitchen while the men were ordered to extract gold teeth and hidden valuables from the corpses. After eight days (or two to three weeks), the men were executed, except for Yehezkel Hering, who disguised himself as a woman and hid with them. The women remained at the camp and sorted the belongings of the murdered Jews until May 1944, when they were deported via Majdanek to Auschwitz and other concentration camps.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

About 50 Jews hid from the shootings at Poniatowa, and 150 were left alive after the shooting to clean up and cremate the corpses. Upon refusing to do so, they were shot on 6 November.Template:Sfn Therefore, the Ukrainians were ordered to do so, but they were very reluctant and drank heavily. Many deserted and after a week, the remaining Ukrainians refused to do any more.Template:Sfn According to Israeli historian David Silberklang, 120 Jews were brought in from Majdanek to do the work.Template:Sfn Other reports have 60 to 80 prisoners of Sonderkommando 1005, who took six weeks to accomplish the task under the guard of Police Battalion 316 from Kraśnik. The bodies were dragged from the trenches by teams of horses, and incinerated on grates with wood and gasoline. Six or eight Jews escaped one night, but many of them were later caught and executed.Template:Sfn During this process the decomposing corpses smelled very bad and reportedly caused hardened SS men to vomit.Template:Sfn Afterward, the Jewish prisoners were executed by men from Police Battalion 101 in Puławy.Template:Sfn

Aftermath and significance

Memorial plaque at Majdanek

3 November was dubbed "Bloody Wednesday" by Majdanek prisoners.Template:Sfn Following the operation, ten labor camps for Jews in the Lublin District (including Dęblin–Irena and Budzyń) had about 10,000 Jews still alive.Template:Sfn The Jews at Budzyń were not executed, despite the camp's status as a subcamp of Majdanek. According to survivors, a few Jews were taken from Budzyń to Majdanek, returning with bloody clothing and tales of the massacre. Israeli historian David Silberklang attributes the survival of the camp to the desire of local German functionaries to continue benefiting financially from slave labor and avoid a transfer to the front, but states it is unclear why the camp escaped Himmler's notice.Template:Sfn

The Harvest Festival operation coincided with other massacres of surviving Jews in Kraków District and Galicia District, including the Wehrmacht camps in Galicia, but spared the forced-labor camps in Radom District which had not been placed under SS command.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn In the Lublin District, Jews were killed separately at Annopol-Rachów, Puławy, and other smaller sites.Template:Sfn The SS enterprise Ostindustrie, which employed many of the murdered prisoners, was not informed in advance; the company was liquidated later in the month.Template:Sfn The operation marked the end of Operation Reinhard.Template:Sfn

According to Christopher Browning, the minimum estimate of the death toll was 30,500 at Majdanek and Poniatowa,Template:Sfn and murder estimates at Trawniki start at 6,000,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn but may be 8,000 to 10,000.Template:Sfn Overall, the operation is variously estimated to have killed 39,000 to 43,000,Template:Sfn at least 40,000,Template:Sfn 42,000,Template:Sfn or 42,000 to 43,000 victims.Template:Sfn Measured by death count, Harvest Festival was the single largest massacre of Jews by German forces during the Holocaust. It surpassed the killing of more than 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar outside Kiev and was exceeded only by the 1941 Odessa massacre of more than 50,000 Jews in October 1941, committed by Romanian troops.Template:Sfn

After the war, Sporrenberg was tried, convicted, and executed by a Polish court for his role in organizing the operation, while Pütz committed suicide.Template:Sfn In 1999, Alfons Gotzfrid was sentenced to time served for his participation in the killings at Majdanek.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The Majdanek State Museum has hosted ceremonies to commemorate the victims.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

References

Bibliography

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Further reading

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