F08_P15: Extermination Camp Majdanek
1944 January 14, Front side - Post card acknowledgement of individual prisoner.
Tan post card with printed text and outline in black ink. Cursive handwriting in black ink is present overall. At the top right corner is a purple 12-pfennig stamp depicting Adolf Hitler facing to the right. Overtop is a cancellation dated January 14, 1944. At the bottom left is a purple stamp from the office of Lublin ghetto. Additionally, I red stamp featuring a red-cross is present and a black stamp featuring the date.
Name/Title
F08_P15: Extermination Camp MajdanekEntry/Object ID
2007.8.15Scope and Content
1944 January 14, post card acknowledgement of individual prisoner.Context
Majdanek was created by extending a prisoner-of-war camp for Poles and Russians that had opened in 1939 in the Lublin suburb of Majdan Tatarski. By the summer of 1942 it was an operating death camp. In February 1943 the Polish Red Cross expressed concern about the inmates' fate; in response, the Nazis permitted selected Polish prisoners to receive parcels, and required each recipient to send a post card acknowledgment. Almost 500,000 prisoners from 28 countries passed through Majdanek, and 360,000 of them perished. Majdanek's gas chambers, drums of Zyklon B cyanide poison, and crematorium ovens were intact when Soviet forces liberated the camp on July 24, 1944, giving the outside world its first opportunity to view the scale and efficiency of the Nazis' mass-murder machinery. A January 17, 1944, parcel waybill for a food shipment to a Majdanek prisoner from the Polish Red Cross office at Lukow, and a censored January 14, 1944, prisoner's formular acknowledgment post card sent by a Majdanek inmate, with Red Cross marking.Collection
Nazi Scourge I: Primary ExhibitionCategory
Post Card
Philatelic Material