Commemorating ceremonies, exhibitions, publications, educational projects and discussions by historians are among the events planned by the Museum as part of the 75th anniversary of “Aktion Reinhardt.” They will be held between March 16, 2017, and November 3, 2018. In this period we will regularly publish on our website (in section “History”) materials on history of the extermination of Jews in the General Government in 1942–1943.

Each of the events aims at commemorating victims and transferring solid historical knowledge. The first undertaking organized as part of the observances will be opening of open-air exhibition “Districts of Extermination” on March 16. It will be accompanied with promotion of the exhibition catalogue which documents persecution and extermination of Jews in German-occupied Lublin. The opening of the exhibition falls on the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the liquidation of the Podzamcze ghetto in Lublin.

On March 17 at 12.00 in the Museum – Memorial Site in Bełżec, observances of the 75th anniversary of mass deportations of Jews to the German death camp in Bełżec will be held. They will be participated by the representatives of Polish authorities. Lila Lam-Nowakowska, survivor from the Stanisławów ghetto, whose father most probably died in Bełżec, will share her memories.

Museum employees conduct intensive scholarly research on “Aktion Reinhardt,” including history of the former death camps in Bełżec and Sobibór. As a result publication “Zagłada Żydów w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie” [Extermination of Jews in the General Government] by dr hab. Dariusz Libionka will be printed in April this year.

Another event to be held this year is an opening of the exhibition presenting drawings by Joseph Richter who documented crimes perpetrated by Germans e.g. in the German death camp in Sobibór or in the labor camp in Trawniki.

The central event in the agenda of the next year’s observances will be the 75th anniversary of the prisoners revolt in the Sobibór camp. In October 2018, the Museum will issue a catalogue showing items taken by the victims on their last journey. The artifacts have been found during archaeological research conducted in the memorial site and have been stored and preserved by the Museum at Majdanek.