of the Lublin District had been transported there from the Warsaw Ghetto after the failure of the uprising there. To avoid further resistance, Heinrich Himmler decided to exterminate the Jewish prisoners at the Lublin camps in a single decisive blow using overwhelming military force. Himmler ordered Friedrich Krüger, Higher SS and Police Leader in the General Governorate, to carry out the murder; Krüger delegated it to SS and Police Leader Jakob Sporrenberg, who had recently succeeded Odilo Globocnik. Jewish inmates were ordered to dig zigzag trenches along the perimeter of Majdanek, Poniatowa, and Trawniki concentration camps. At Majdanek, the trenches were dug by a team of 300 prisoners working in three shifts in field 5, south of the crematorium, and measured about long, deep and wide. Although the trenches were supposedly for defense against air raids, and their zigzag shape granted some plausibility to this lie, the prisoners guessed their true purpose. On 2 November, 2,000 to 3,000 SS and police personnel arrived in Lublin: Waffen-SS from as far away as Kraków, Police Regiment 22, Police Regiment 25 (including Reserve Police Battalion 101), and the Lublin Security Police. That evening, Sporrenberg convened a meeting between his own staff, the commandants of Majdanek, Trawniki, and Poniatowa, local Security Police commander , and the commanders of the various units. The murder operation, due to begin at dawn the next day, was planned as a military operation, with the code name Erntefest ("Harvest Festival"). Two loudspeakers, installed on police cars, were positioned at Majdanek, one near the trenches and the other by the entrance of the camp. The leadership of the Lipowa 7 camp in Lublin, which held Jewish prisoners of war, queried Himmler as to whether they should violate the Geneva Convention by allowing the prisoners to be executed. Himmler's aide, Werner Grothmann, replied that "all Jews without exception are subject to liquidation". Killings Majdanek At 5:00 on 3 November 1943, prisoners at Majdanek were awoken as usual in the dark, but the camp had been surrounded by an additional 500 soldiers during the night. The 3,500 to 4,000 Jewish prisoners lived among non-Jewish prisoners. After morning roll call, the groups were separated, with Jews ordered to go to camp 5. Jews in the infirmary were trucked to that location, while the non-Jewish prisoners at camp 5 were moved to camp 4. The barbed wire fence was repositioned to include the execution