Letter to the USHMM on Majdanek

Director Sara Bloomfeld
Chairman Tom Berstein
Vice Chairman Allan M. Holt
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW
Washington, DC 20024-2126

Raymund Flandez  Communications Officer
[email protected]

Andrew Hollinger  Director, Communications
[email protected]

Dear officers and Directors of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council:

We ask that you share this missive with the other Council members.

At the Nuremberg Tribunal, Soviet prosecutors presented evidence that 1,400,000 people were killed at Majdanek Concentration Camp in Lublin, Poland.  Revisionist Historians have long disputed this figure and the official number has drifted downward over time; dropping to somewhere around a 250,000 figure by 2004.

In 2000 Revisionist scholars Carlo Mattogno and Jurgen Graff  found that the actual figure was well below 100,000 deaths. They also pointed out that Jewish inmates were a majority of the victims of the Camp, comprising 83% of the deaths versus 28% in Soviet propaganda tales.  See here  for their excellent study.

Revisionist historians everywhere expressed pleasure at the 12/23/05 announcement by the Auschwitz State Museum. 

The Museum announced that Majdanek researcher Tomasz Kranz had reviewed the evidence and concluded that the true death toll of Majdanek from all causes was 78,000. “The findings [of Kranz] are highly authoritative,” declared Prof. Zygmunt Mańkowski, chairman of the Majdanek Museum board.  Kranz's research confirmed the figure given by Raul Hilberg and the accuracy of Revisionist research but  was also good news, in a manner of speaking.  While 78,000 victims is still a horrible tragedy it is a quantum difference from the Nuremberg figure and the various exaggerated "official" figures given since 1946.

While we at CODOH saw Kranz's research as good news, many Holocaust Believers reacted with disappointment and even anger. Even today, various pseudo-educational websites cling to the discredited and absurdly exaggerated Majdanek figures.  For example the Holocaust explained website still posts, "During this time approximately 360,000 victims died or were murdered at Majdanek, 120,000 of them Jews."

 Other sites conflate the total deaths with murders by alleged gassings, "It is estimated that 80,000 inmates were gassed at Majdanek," claims the Jewish Virtual Library.   

We had assumed that sites which promote greatly exaggerated figures would, sooner or later, be reached by the Truth.  Therefore we were surprised and dismayed when your website posted what looked like a confused attempt to "reinflate" the Majdanek death toll.

The total number of prisoners to go through the Majdanek main camp has not yet been recalculated consistent with the latest research. The number of deaths is now estimated at between 80,000 and 110,000 for the main camp alone. Most succumbed to starvation, disease, exposure, and the effects of physical torture or back-breaking labor performed under threat of violence...The total number of those who died in Majdanek's gas chambers is unknown.     

In addition to deaths in the main camp, the SS and police shot between 15,000 and 20,000 Jews in Trawniki and Poniatowa during Operation “Harvest Festival” on November 3 (Trawniki) and November 3-4 (Poniatowa), 1943. The number of Jewish prisoners who died in Majdanek’s subcamps between October 1943 and January 1945 is not known. Hence, at a minimum, between 95,000 and 130,000 prisoners died in the Majdanek system between November 1941 and January 1945. Between 89,000 and 110,000 were Jews. At least 20,000 prisoners who were not Jews died at the Majdanek main camp. [emp. added]

The research of Graff, Kranz, and Mattagno all confirm that of Hilberg. At this point, there is no reason to equivocate on the Majdanek death toll or to rely on various unfounded "estimates."  There is also no ethical reason to conflate the deaths in the Majdanek Camp with those of "the Majdanek system."  Your Museum's use of inflated guesses rather than accurate research and its attempt to expand the numbers to include the "system" are highly confusing to anyone trying to learn the accurate history of Majdanek Camp. 

We ask that the Museum's Board remove the confusing page.  We also ask the Board to inquire why and how such a misleading article was posted on the Museum's website.  

Respectfully yours for honest research and open discussion

David Merlin
Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust
PO Box 20774
York, PA 17402, USA
Email: [email protected]