Operation Harvest Festival

Operation Harvest Festival
Remains of the mass graves at Majdanek
Location	Majdanek, Poniatowa and Trawniki concentration camps in the Lublin District of the General Governorate
Date	3–4 November 1943
Target	Jews
Attack type	Shooting
Weapons	Rifles, automatic weapons
Deaths	39,000–43,000
Perpetrators	SS, Order police, Trawniki men Jakob Sporrenberg

Operation Harvest Festival (German: Aktion Erntefest) was the murder of up to 43,000 Jews at the Majdanek, Poniatowa and Trawniki concentration camps by the SS, the Order Police battalions, and the Ukrainian Sonderdienst on 3–4 November 1943.

After a series of Jewish uprisings in ghettos and extermination camps, Heinrich Himmler ordered the murder of the remaining Jewish forced laborers in the Lublin District of German-occupied Poland. Jewish laborers in the camps had to dig zigzag trenches, supposedly for air defense, in late October. Thousands of SS and police personnel arrived in Lublin on 2 November. That day, SS and Police Leader Jakob Sporrenberg, who was in charge of the operation, held a conference to plan it.

The killings began on the morning of 3 November at Majdanek, where Jewish prisoners were separated from non-Jewish prisoners, and encompassed the Lipowa 7 and Lublin airfield camps, which imprisoned Jews in the city. A total of 18,400 people were shot by the early evening. The same day, 6,000 people were murdered at Trawniki, including some from Dorohucza. After finishing the Majdanek operation, several of the involved units proceeded to Poniatowa, where they murdered the camp's 14,500 prisoners on 4 November. In all three camps, Jews were forced to strip naked and walk into the previously dug trenches, where they were shot. Loud music was played to cover the sound of gunfire.

After the operation, about 10,000 Jews were left alive in various labor camps in the Lublin District. The bodies of the victims were burned by other Jews, who had been spared temporarily from death. With around 40,000 victims, Operation Harvest Festival was the largest single massacre of Jews by German forces during the Holocaust.