In the first days of November 1943, the Germans murdered in mass executions more than 42,000 Jews held in KL Lublin and other labour camps in the Lublin District of the occupied General Government. When preparing this crime, the perpetrators called it Aktion “Erntefest” (Operation “Harvest Festival”).

In Operation “Reinhardt”, carried out from the spring of 1942, the Germans aimed at the total extermination of the Jewish population in the occupied Polish territories. Jews were mass-murdered by the Nazis in the extermination camps of Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor and many other places. This was the result of the implementation of the plan for the “final solution of the Jewish question” adopted by the Third Reich authorities in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference.

In the second half of 1943, there were revolts by Jewish prisoners in the death camps at Treblinka and Sobibor.  These events probably triggered the decision to murder the surviving Jews imprisoned in the camps of the Lublin District. At the end of August 1943, Jakob Sporrenberg, the higher commander of the police and SS in the Lublin district, received clear directives on the matter from Wilhelm Friedrich Krüger, who in turn received orders from Heinrich Himmler. Himmler, in one of his letters addressed to his subordinates, stated:  “The problem of the Jews in the Lublin district has grown to dangerous proportions. This state of affairs must be clarified once and for all”.

On 2 November 1943, Sporrenberg convened a meeting of the commanders of KL Lublin and the camps in Poniatowa and Trawniki, as well as the commanders of the SS divisions that were to take part in the operation to liquidate the Jews. They were informed that the operation to murder the remaining Jewish population would begin the following day at 8.00 am.

At KL Lublin, the Jewish prisoners were separated from the others, directed to field near the V camp, where they were ordered to undress in a barrack, and then led to the ditches that had been dug earlier, then the Germans carried out the executions. The sounds of the murder were drowned out by two carts with megaphones. A few days later, the burning of the bodies of the prisoners took place at the execution site and lasted for two months.

On the territory of KL Lublin, the Germans murdered more than 18,000 Jews, about 10,000 in Trawniki and 14,000 in Poniatowa.