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“They trod into Majdanek, which had been liberated by the Soviets barely three days earlier. The Nazi camp lay on a plate-flat field of brown-green grass and its squat, long green barracks looked almost like camouflage. Alexander smelled the acrid-sweet smell of burning flesh in the air, but said nothing, though by the gradual quieting down in his tank and around his formations, he could tell his men smelled it, too.
"Why did they want us to come here?" asked Telikov, coming up to Alexander and staring with him at the city of Lublin through the barbed wire fence. Lublin was just over the field and down a slope.
"The high command wants us to see what we're dealing with as we force our way into Germany," said Alexander. "So we don't feel pity for the Germans."
Ouspensky asked if the residents of Lublin could smell what he smelled, and Alexander replied that they had probably been smelling it every day for months.
The camp was small and seemed almost serene-as if the humanity had left it, leaving behind only ghosts-
And ash-
And bones-
And blue remnants of Zyclon B gas on the concrete walls.
Femur bones, and clavicles
And spy holes in steel doors.
A "bathhouse" on one side of the small camp.
And ovens with one long tall chimney stack on the other.
A road that connected them.
Barracks that divided them.
A commandant's house.
SS barracks.
And nothing else.
The men walked through slowly and silently, and then bent their heads, and finally, standing at the back of the camp, they took off their caps.
"Can't pretend this was a forced labor camp, can you?" Ouspensky said to Alexander.
"No, can't.”