Today, the State Museum at Majdanek held celebrations marking the 82nd anniversary of Operation Erntefest, attended by representatives of the City of Lublin, the Marshal's Office, the Association of Former Concentration Camp Prisoners, representatives of the Jewish Community, a delegation from the Institute of National Remembrance, Rabbi Małgorzata Kordowicz, and Father Wojciech Lemański with a group from Starszym Braciom w Wierze (Older Brothers in Faith), as well as teachers and students from High School No. 19 in Warsaw. The event included a presentation that familiarized the audience with the history of the crimes committed in the camps in Trawniki, Poniatowa, and Majdanek on November 3 and 4, 1943. Participants also took part in a guided tour, and at the end, excerpts from the memoirs of former prisoners were read aloud at the execution pits, and flowers were laid.
The Nazis mockingly referred to November 3 and 4, 1943, when over 40,000 people were murdered, as “harvest festival” (Erntefest in German). During the massacre of the camp prisoners, loud dance music was played to drown out the sound of machine guns. The prisoners who survived used the name “Bloody Wednesday” to refer to the day of the greatest massacre in the camp. Operation Ertefest was the conclusion of Operation Reinhardt, managed by Odilo Globocnik, a close associate of Himmler, which claimed the lives of approximately 1.85 million people.
Operation Erntefest was the largest mass execution at the Majdanek Museum, where over 18,000 people, including women, men, and children, were killed.
Students from High School No. 19 in Warsaw read testimonies from surviving prisoners, including Zacheusz Pawlak:
In the last days of October 1943, about 50 meters from the crematoria (...), a large commando consisting entirely of Jews was digging ditches. (...) They were in a great hurry to dig the ditches. They worked in two shifts, day and night, twelve hours per shift. About 150 Jews worked in each shift (..) At that time, I was working (...) right next to the crematoria. From there, I watched the work of this group. They dug ditches there, 100 meters long, 3 meters deep, and 3 meters wide. After three days and three nights of work, the ditches were ready. There were various comments about the purpose of these ditches. All of them were optimistic. (...) However, no one could have predicted what their actual purpose would be.
In field V, Jews were forced to take off their clothes and then ordered to lie down in ditches next to each other. SS officers shot them in the back of the head. The next victims were ordered to lie down on top of the bodies. At that time, a roll call was held in the other prison fields, during which Jews were gathered at the exit gates of the fields in order to lead the prisoners to the place of execution.
The ceremony ended with the laying of flowers and a joint prayer led by Rabbi Małgorzata Kordowicz and Father Wojciech Lemański.
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