In 1944, a pile of human bones and skulls was found in the Majdanek concentration camp outside Lublin, Poland, where between 95,000 and 130,000 people, mostly Jews, were murdered between 1941 and 1944.

 　In 1944, a pile of human bones and skulls was found at the Majdanek concentration camp outside of Lublin, Poland. Majdanek was the second largest death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland after Auschwitz; between 95,000 and 130,000 people, mostly Jews, were murdered in the camp between 1941 and 1944.

　The crematoriums could not burn all the bodies. For this reason, the Germans organized special bonfires and dug special pits in which iron frames were installed for this purpose. In Majdanek there was a pit with an iron frame and burnt-out sides. Wooden planks were placed on the frame, on top of which a layer of corpses was laid, then another layer of planks, then another layer of corpses. With this structure, more than 500 corpses could be extinguished, and they burned for several days. The crematorium was not sufficient to incinerate all the corpses of the prisoners the Germans killed in the gas chambers. The bones that remained after the bodies were incinerated were crushed in a grinder.

　Construction of the Majdanek camp began in October 1941 with the arrival of approximately 2,000 Soviet prisoners of war. Most of the Soviet POWs at Majdanek were debilitated, and by February 1942, nearly all had died. The SS recruited Jewish forced laborers from the Lipova Street camp in the center of Lublin to help build Majdanek. on December 11-12, 1941, the SS rounded up over 300 Jews on the streets of Lublin and selected about 150 as the first Jewish prisoners to be held at Majdanek. In January and February 1942, the SS and police selected Polish Jews from the Lublin ghetto and forced them to Majdanek for forced labor In January and February 1942, the first non-Jewish Polish prisoners also arrived in Majdanek In 1941 through Conditions in the camp during the bitterly cold winter of 1942 were deadly. The SS routinely shot and killed debilitated prisoners at the camp's edge and in the Krepiecki Forest north of Lublin.

　　The SS evacuated most prisoners to a concentration camp further west in the spring of 1944, and as Soviet troops approached Lublin in late July 1944, the remaining camp personnel hastily abandoned Majdanek without completely dismantling the camp. Soviet troops first arrived at Majdanek on the night of July 22-23 and captured Lublin on July 24. Captured nearly intact, Majdanek was the first major concentration camp to be liberated.