On 23 October 2024, at the Lublin Conference Centre, we celebrated the 80th anniversary of the State Museum at Majdanek. It was a spontaneous occasion for a meeting within the circle of museologists and friends of the Museum, reminding of the institution’s history, presentation of present-day activity as well as honouring the most deserving employees.

In October 1944, just three months after the liquidation of the Majdanek German Nazi concentration camp, a Museum was established on its former grounds. It was the world’s first Memorial dedicated to the victims of World War II.

Museum and Memorial in Sobibór received a special commendation in the European Museum of the Year Award 2024 (EMYA) prestigious contest. The award ceremony gala was held on 4 May in Portimao, Portugal. 50 European museum were nominated including 5 candidates from Poland.

During another ”Museum in Action” seminar, we reflected on how to prepare the text for the editorial process and how to plan the works on creating an exhibition. The course aims to improve the skills of our staff and to pursue the goals forming the foundation of our institution more effectively.

Nearly 15 speakers were invited to participate in the on-line conference "Museum exhibitions in the Holocaust memorials: from Bełżec to Sobibór" organized on June 4–5, 2024. It is dedicated to a broader context of influence and perception of exhibitions in the museums established on the former camp grounds. Register and take part in our event. It will be held in English, under honorary patronage of the National Institute of Museums.

On 15 April 2024, the inaugural session of the Council of the State Museum at Majdanek took place. Appointed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage for the 2024–2028 term of office, a new Council has a task to assess the Museum activities and approve its plans.

SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor was the final extermination camp of operation “Reinhardt” to be liquidated, and – in the hopes of the perpetrators – forever forgotten. The crime traces concealed in the autumn of 1943 as well as the evidence for the lives of Jews that were murdered in the camp have been recovered during the archaeological research and secured.

On the International Holocaust Remembrance Day we invoke the memory of the six million Jewish women, children and men – victims of transports, inhuman living conditions in the locked ghettos, executions, manhunts, round-ups, extermination in the gas chambers. The central and the most bloody stage of the Holocaust was perpetrated in the General Government under the codename “Einsatz Reinhardt.”

The German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated on 27 January 1945. In recognition of that event, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed it as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It constitutes an opportunity to even more eagerly reflect on the tragic fate of Jews – victims of hatred murdered during World War II – as well as on the current situation of humanity in the 21st century.

We are proud that our branch - the Museum and Memorial in Sobibór has been nominated for the prestigious European Museum of the Year Award.

Recently we finished our nearly two-year-long campaign of commemorating the 80th anniversary of operation "Reinhardt." Between March 2022 and November 2023 we held nearly 50 various projects and activities that aimed at raising awareness about the genocide of nearly 2,000,000 Jews.

We are glad to announce that our latest book project has been accomplished. “The Infrastructure of Operation Reinhardt” is now available to the English-speaking readers

Recently, we commemorated the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of prisoner uprising at the German death camp in Sobibór. The main ceremonies were held on 12 October, while the accompanying events terminated on 14 October with a ceremony commemorating the victims. It was a very personal ceremony, attended by descendants of survivors’ families, as well as by families of the camp victims.

Our new publication - Sobibór: Place, Memorial, Exhibition describes the new commemoration on the grounds of the former German Nazi extermination camp and the echoes of the tragic past that can now be discovered through reading the historical landscape.

On 12 October 2023, families of the Sobibór Survivors, representatives of many countries, international institutions, and martyrdom museums took part in the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the German Nazi death camp in Sobibór. On that day, we symbolically opened a new spatial arrangement of the Memorial Site. The event was held under Honorary Patronage of the President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda.

The construction works of the new spatial arrangement on the grounds of the former German Nazi extermination camp have been completed. The commemoration will be available for our visitors on 13 October 2023.

In October 1943, the uprising broke out in the German Nazi death camp in Sobibór. It was one of the most heroic acts of Jewish resistance during WWII. As a result, about 300 prisoners escaped from the camp, from which ca. 50 survived the war. The ceremony commemorating the uprising is held on 12 October, at 13.00 at the Museum and Memorial in Sobibór.

SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor was one of the three German extermination camps operating in the General Government within the framework of operation “Reinhardt.” Around 180,000 men, women, and children were murdered there. Over a half of the victims were the Polish Jews, and others included the Dutch, Slovak, Czech, French, German, and Byelorussian Jews.

We present our new book in which we analyse "Einsatz Reinhardt" – the largest and the most bloody genocidal operation of World War II, focusing on its logistics and the extermination apparatus.

At 5 p.m. on 20 June we invite everyone to the Majdanek, Bełżec, and Sobibór memorials for a special discussion: “The Landscapes of the Holocaust - the importance of the Lublin region in the history and commemoration of the mass extermination of Jews during World War II.” The root for the discussion, during which we will symbolically connect three memorial sites of operation “Reinhardt” camps, is the premiere of our new book.

On the Holocaust Remembrance Day we present the new issue of our "Varia" magazine. This volume is dedicated to the subject of education at the State Museum at Majdanek, particularly to the Holocaust education.

The collection of the State Museum at Majdanek ) contains an extraordinary diary – one of the most important testimonies to the extermination of the Polish Jews. 80 years after the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, in cooperation with the Prószyński Media publishing house we are releasing a new edition of this source

On 16 March 1942, at 5.30 p.m. Hermann Höfle - an Austrian Nazi, at the head of the so-called "resettlement staff", and the chief logistician of the extermination of Jews in the General Government - convened a meeting of SS officers, security police functionaries, and the German civil administration representatives in Lublin. The subject of the meeting briefing was Odilo Globocnik's planned operation to liquidate the ghetto in Lublin‘s Podzamcze.

On 6 March 2023, the Museum Council at the State Museum at Majdanek met. The Council members unanimously approved the report on the Museum's activities in 2022 and adopted the work plan for the current year.