Le massacre de Majdanek....

Le massacre de Majdanek....


Le 3 novembre paraissait, sur le site du quotidien israélien "Haaretz",
un article rappelant que ce jour-là marquait l'anniversaire d'un massacre de grande ampleur,
et même d'une ampleur extravagante:

- les "Nazis, troublés par la résistance juive qui grandissait dans la région",
massacrèrent en un jour, oui, en une seule journée - 43.000 juifs et ce dans Majdanek
et deux de ses sous-camps de la région de Lublin (en Pologne).
C'est ce qui est appelé l'Aktion Erntefest (Opération Fête des moissons):

- les prisonniers avaient dû creuser des tranchées prétendument antiaériennes
dans les jours précédant l'exécution, puis, le 3 novembre, nus et les mains derrière la nuque,
on les avait fusillés, "un par un" (43.000 !), chacun devant se coucher sur les corps des victimes
qui l'avaient précédé.
Mais, heureusement, "les fusillades étaient accompagnées d'une bande sonore de musique
de danse diffusée par haut-parleurs, sans doute pour rendre plus difficile pour les voisins
des camps de savoir ce qui se passait".
Les anglophones trouveront le début de cet article à l'adresse suivante:

http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/this-day-in-jewish-history/.premium-1.5


Il est illusté de la photo qu'on trouvera ici en pièce jointe et qui porte la légende suivante:
"Une photo de 1944 du charnier de Majdanek".
Lisez bien: "1944", c'est-à-dire un an après cette prétendue tuerie,
et "charnier" est bien au singulier (mass grave).









HAARETZ



This Day in Jewish History /  Nazis kill 43,000 in one-day Harvest Festival  massacre
Perturbed by increasing Jewish resistance in the  area, the Nazis executed some 43,000 Jews
at Majdanek and two of its  sub-camps in the Lublin district of  Poland.
By David B. Green :
http://www.haaretz.com/misc/writers/david-b-green-1.357  
| Nov. 3, 2013 | 11:13 AM | <image001.png>1
Tweet <https://twitter.com/share>  
<image003.jpg>
A 1944 photo of the mass grave at  Majdanek.
 
this story is by
David B.  Green :

http://www.haaretz.com/misc/writers/david-b-green-1.357

Mass execution at Majdanek Nazi death  camp remembered
http://www.haaretz.com/news/mass-execution-at-majdanek-nazi-death-camp-remembered-1.104501
 
By DPA | Nov. 3, 2003 | 12:00 AM |  <image001.png>1
On November 3,  1943, German forces in the Lublin district of Poland carried out the  Holocaust's largest massacre of Jews over a 24-hour period. Dubbed  Aktion Erntefest (Operation Harvest Festival), the Nazis oversaw the  execution of some 43,000 people at Majdanek and two
of its sub-camps,  Trawniki and Poniatowa.

Operation Harvest  Festival came toward the end of Operation Reinhard, the two-year effort
by the Germans to murder all the Jews of what was called the General  Government
(namely, occupied Poland).
Between October 1941 and November  1943, some two million Jews were killed
in the context of Operation  Reinhard.

By that November,  however, the Germans were concerned by the expressions of resistance
 they were facing from Jews in areas near the Russian front. These had  included,
from August-October, uprisings in both the Vilna and Bialystok  ghettos, and armed actions
in both the Treblinka and Sobibor death  camps. The decision was made to eliminate those
Jews who remained alive  - for the most part as slave laborers - in the Lublin district,
in  eastern Poland.

Stripped of  illusions

In his 1992 book  “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in  Poland,
” historian Christopher R. Browning stated that, up through the  spring of 1943,
Jews continued to hold on to the hope of “salvation  through labor,” but that in the months
that followed,they were  “gradually being stripped of their illusions.”
From the point of view of  SS leader Heinrich Himmler, their murder – which had always
been part of  the plan –would have to be carried out in one swift action, otherwise
 his men would face the possibility of further resistance from Jews who  realized they
had nothing left to lose.

In preparations for  the massacre, prisoners were ordered to dig - in a zigzag pattern -
what  were purported to be antiaircraft trenches, but what would in fact  become their own graves. At dawn on November 3, Majdanek and its two  sub-camps were surrounded by SS troops
and members of Reserve Police  Unit 101. During the course of the day, prisoners were brought from the  camps to the trenches and shot, one by one. At Majdanek, the number of  murdered reached 18,400, while at Trawniki the casualty numbers reached  between 6,000 and 10,000. Because of a lack of manpower, the killing at  Poniatowa extended through to November 4.

At all three camps,  prisoners were ordered to strip naked and clasp their hands behind their  
necks before they were led to the trenches, where they had to lie down  on top of the bodies
of the victims who had preceded them to their  deaths. Their shootings were accompanied
by a soundtrack of dance music  played over loudspeakers, presumably to make it harder
for neighbors of  the camps to know what was happening. When prisoners in one of the
 barracks at Poniatowa demonstrated resistance, their building was set on  fire.
The total killed at that camp is estimated at  14,000.

Aktion Erntefest  succeeded in its goal of ridding the Lublin district of its final surviving Jews.

Twitter:  @davidbeegreen

http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/this-day-in-jewish-history/.premium-1.555804