Anton Thernes

Anton Thernes (8 February 1892 – 3 December 1944) was a Nazi German war criminal, deputy commandant of administration at the notorious Majdanek concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland, in World War II. He was tried at the Majdanek Trials and executed on 3 December 1944, along with five other war criminals, near the gas chambers and the Majdanek crematorium. A member of the SS, Thernes served as the last administrative chief of KL Lublin / Majdanek. He was also in charge of food and slave labour administration, starvation rationing, and the maintenance of camp structures including the storage depot for property and valuables stolen from the Holocaust victims at the killing centers in Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka.

Thernes was given the task of destroying the evidence of crimes against humanity and genocide, but ran out of time due to his ineptitude and lethargy.

Thernes was publicly hanged on 3 December 1944 along with five other war criminals, close to the gas chambers and the Majdanek crematorium.

Harvest Festival During the mere 34 months of camp operation, more than 79,000 people were murdered at the main camp alone (59,000 of them Polish Jews). Some 18,000 Jews were killed at Majdanek on 3 November 1943 during the largest single-day, single-camp massacre of the Holocaust, named Harvest Festival (totalling 43,000 with subcamps).