Video: 'Majdanek Concentration Camp' (23 videos)

(Wednesday, October 1, 1941; during The Holocaust, part of World War II) — Majdanek (or Lublin), a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II, became operational today.

The camp had seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, and some 227 structures in all, placing it among the largest of Nazi-run concentration camps.

Although initially intended for forced labor rather than extermination, the camp was used to kill people on an industrial scale during Operation Reinhard, the German plan to murder all Jews within their own General Government territory of Poland.

An estimated 78,000 people would be killed before the camp was liberated by the Soviet soldiers on July 22, 1944.