The Majdanek forced labor camp located on the outskirts of Lublin ( like Sobibór ) and closed temporarily during an epidemic of typhus , was reopened in March 1942 for Operation Reinhard ; first , as a storage depot for valuables stolen from the victims of gassing at the killing centers of Belzec , Sobibór , and Treblinka , It became a place of extermination of large Jewish populations from south-eastern Poland ( Kraków , Lwów , Zamość , Warsaw ) after the gas chambers were constructed in late 1942 . The gassing of Polish Jews was performed in plain view of other inmates , without as much as a fence around the killing facilities . According to witness 's testimony , " to drown the cries of the dying , tractor engines were run near the gas chambers " before they took the dead away to the crematorium . Majdanek was the site of death of 59,000 Polish Jews ( from among its 79,000 victims ) . By the end of Operation '' Aktion Erntefest '' ( Harvest Festival ) conducted at Majdanek in early November 1943 ( the single largest German massacre of Jews during the entire war ) , the camp had only 71 Jews left
Aktion Erntefest
Aktion Erntefest
The Holocaust in Poland