Krepiec

By March 1942, the Nazis had begun Operation Reinhardt and the Jews of Lublin began to be deported to Belzec extermination camp. But the gas chambers in Belzec turned out to be too small and could not cope with the large number of Jews arriving at the camp. The Nazis had no plans to stop the liquidation of the ghetto in Lublin. Therefore, in April, 1942, about 3,000 Jews from the ghetto were murdered and buried in a forest called Krepiec, about ten kilometres southeast of Lublin. In the summer of 1942, another hundred Jews from the nearby Majdanek concentration camp were murdered in Krepiec. These Jews suffered from typhoid fever and had to be killed. During the winter of 1942/43, SS began to cremate the bodies of those murdered. Sometimes when the crematoria facilities in Majdanek could not dispose bodies fast enough, bodies were transported to Krepiec and buried there. In the winter of 1943, the cremation of the bodies was completed and no new bodies were cremated in Krepiec. At this time, a larger crematorium had been built in Majdanek with capacity on par with the gas chambers.