Majdanek State Museum

Some 4km southeast of Lublin’s centre is Majdanek extermination camp, where tens of thousands were murdered. The site is now the Majdanek State Museum, founded only four months after the camp’s liberation – the first of its kind in the world. Unlike other extermination camps, the Nazis went to no effort to conceal Majdanek. Coming from the main road, the sudden appearance of time-frozen guard towers and barbed-wire fences interrupting the sprawl of suburbia is disquieting. The details are all the more confronting; gas chambers are open to visitors, and many of the prisoners’ possessions are on display. The 5km walk through the museum starts at the Visitor’s Centre, passes the foreboding Monument of Fight & Martyrdom, through parts of the barracks and finishes at the guarded mausoleum containing the ashes of many victims. Children under 14 are not permitted to visit the museum.