The Execution Wall and the Majdanek Massacre

On March 15th, we returned to Auschwitz I to attend a workshop and explore more of the camp. I decided to revisit the execution wall between Blocks 10 and 11. Most of those executed here were Polish political prisoners, above all the leaders and members of clandestine organizations and people who helped escapees or facilitated contacts with the outside world. Prisoners of other nationalities and ethnic origins, including Jews and Soviet POWs, were also sometimes shot at this wall. The execution wall was dismantled in 1944 on the orders of the camp authorities. Executions were subsequently carried out elsewhere, most often in the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz II – Birkenau. After the war, the execution wall was partially reconstructed by the Museum.

Visiting this wall again reminded me of a scene in Alexander Donat's The Holocaust Kingdom, which can be found on pages 200 and 201 of the text. In this particular scene, an SS officer explains in detail the events of November 3rd, 1943 to the author, in which 18,000 Jews were killed in two days. Why? “Weapons were found hidden among the prisoners. They were going to mutiny!” (Donat, 200). Of course this was nothing more than an excuse and the Majdanek massacre’s true objective was the mass extermination of the Jews located at Majdanek concentration camp and all of its subcamps.

Prior to the massacre, prisoners were forced to dig three ditches that were two yards deep and about 1000 yards long. Male and female prisoners were then driven naked into separate ditches and forced to lie flat before being showered with bullets from automatic rifles. As Donat explains it, “the next groups were forced to lie down on top of the corpses of the previous ones" and “the killings went on for two days, from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m.” (Donat, 201). The killing of all those innocent people struck the author particularly hard, since he thought his wife was among the dead. This scene described in The Holocaust Kingdom may not have occurred at Auschwitz I, where the execution wall is located, but they are indeed connected to each other through a dark and sadistic twist: the irrational hatred of all the Jews of Europe. The murders at the execution wall in Auschwitz I and the scene described in Alexander Donat’s book could have and should have been prevented. It is one thing to read about mass murder in a memoir but when you are standing in a spot where so many innocent lives were wiped out, it brings a new understanding to the cruelty of mankind.

One thing I have learned from this trip is the importance of physicality, for physically being in an area where so many lives were destroyed or forever altered brings a whole new understanding of a situation. In this case, visiting Auschwitz I and seeing a site of mass murder helps me to truly grasp the words written by Alexander Donat in The Holocaust Kingdom.

The Execution Wall at Auschwitz I.