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or ''Einsatz Reinhard'' , location =
Occupied Poland ' ( Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. Season 2 premiered on 10 Octobe ...
, date = October 1941 – November 1943 , incident_type = Mass deportations to
extermination camp Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
s , perpetrators = Odilo Globočnik, Hermann Höfle, Richard Thomalla, Erwin Lambert, Christian Wirth, Heinrich Himmler, Franz Stangl and others. , participants = , organizations = SS, Order Police battalions, '' Sicherheitsdienst'', Trawnikis , camp = Belzec
Sobibor
Treblinka Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The cam ...

Additional:
Chełmno
Majdanek
Auschwitz II , ghetto = European and
Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland Ghettos were established by Nazi Germany in hundreds of locations across occupied Poland after the German invasion of Poland. Yitzhak Arad, ''Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka.'' Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1987.''Biuletyn ...
including
Białystok Białystok is the largest city in northeastern Poland and the capital of the Podlaskie Voivodeship. It is the tenth-largest city in Poland, second in terms of population density, and thirteenth in area. Białystok is located in the Białystok U ...
, Częstochowa,
Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula, Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland un ...
,
Lublin Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of ...
,
Łódź Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of ca ...
,
Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officiall ...
and others , victims = Around 2 million Jews , survivors = , witnesses = , documentation = , memorials = On camp sites and deportation points , notes = This was the most lethal phase of
the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europ ...
. Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt (german: Aktion Reinhard or ; also or ) was the codename of the secret
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
plan in
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
to exterminate
Polish Jews The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the l ...
in the
General Government The General Government (german: Generalgouvernement, pl, Generalne Gubernatorstwo, uk, Генеральна губернія), also referred to as the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (german: Generalgouvernement für die be ...
district of German-
occupied Poland ' ( Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. Season 2 premiered on 10 Octobe ...
. This deadliest phase of
the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europ ...
was marked by the introduction of
extermination camp Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
s. As many as two million Jews were sent to Bełżec, Sobibór, and
Treblinka Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The cam ...
to be murdered in purpose-built gas chambers. In addition, facilities for mass-murder using Zyklon B were developed at about the same time at the Majdanek concentration camp and at
Auschwitz II-Birkenau Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It c ...
, near the earlier-established
Auschwitz I Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It co ...
camp for ethnically Polish prisoners.


Background

After the German–Soviet war began, the Nazis undertook their European-wide " Final Solution to the Jewish Question". In January 1942, during a secret meeting of German leaders chaired by Reinhard Heydrich, Operation Reinhard was drafted; it was soon to become a significant step in the systematic murder of the Jews in occupied Europe, beginning in the
General Government The General Government (german: Generalgouvernement, pl, Generalne Gubernatorstwo, uk, Генеральна губернія), also referred to as the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (german: Generalgouvernement für die be ...
district of German-
occupied Poland ' ( Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. Season 2 premiered on 10 Octobe ...
. Within months, three top-secret camps (at Bełżec, Sobibór, and
Treblinka Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The cam ...
) were built to efficiently murder tens of thousands of Jews every day. These camps differed from
Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed int ...
and Majdanek, because the latter operated as
forced-labour camps A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especi ...
initially, before they became death camps fitted with crematoria. Unlike "mixed" extermination camps, the extermination camps of Operation Reinhard kept no prisoners, except as a means of furthering the camps' sole purpose of industrial scale murder. Very few Jews successfully escaped death (notably, only two at Bełżec). All other victims were murdered on arrival. The organizational apparatus behind the new extermination plan had been put to the test already during the "euthanasia" ''Aktion'' T4 programme ending in August 1941, during which more than 70,000 Polish and German disabled men, women, and children were murdered. The ''SS'' officers responsible for the ''Aktion'' T4, including Christian Wirth, Franz Stangl, and Irmfried Eberl, were all given key roles in the implementation of the "Final Solution" in 1942.


Operational name

The origin of the operation's name is debated by Holocaust researchers. Various German documents spell the name differently, some with "t" after "d" (as in "Aktion Reinhardt"), others without it. Yet another spelling (''Einsatz Reinhart'') was used in the
Höfle Telegram The Höfle Telegram (or Hoefle Telegram) is a cryptic one-page document, discovered in 2000 among the declassified World War II archives of the Public Record Office in Kew, England. The document consists of several radio telegrams in translatio ...
. ''Sources:'' Arad, Browning, Weiss. It is generally believed that ''Aktion Reinhardt'', outlined at the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942, was named after Reinhard Heydrich, the coordinator of the so-called Final Solution of the Jewish Question, which entailed the extermination of the Jews living in the European countries occupied by Nazi Germany. Heydrich was attacked by British-trained
Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...
n agents on 27 May 1942 and died of his injuries eight days later. The earliest memo spelling out ''Einsatz Reinhard'' was relayed two months later.


Death camps

On 13 October 1941, SS and Police Leader Odilo Globočnik headquartered in Lublin received an oral order from Himmleranticipating the fall of Moscowto begin the construction of the first extermination camp at Bełżec in the General Government territory of occupied Poland. The order preceded the Wannsee Conference by three months. The new camp was operational from 17 March 1942, with leadership brought in from Germany under the guise of Organisation Todt (OT). Globočnik was given control over the entire programme. All the secret orders he received came directly from Himmler and not from ''SS-Gruppenführer'' Richard Glücks, head of the greater Nazi concentration camp system, which was run by the '' SS-Totenkopfverbände'' and engaged in slave labour for the war effort. Each death camp was managed by between 20 and 35 officers from the ''Totenkopfverbände'' ( Death's Head Units) sworn to absolute secrecy, and augmented by the ''Aktion'' T4 personnel selected by Globočnik. The extermination program was designed by them based on prior experience from the forced euthanasia centres. The bulk of the actual labour at each "final solution" camp was performed by up to 100 mostly Ukrainian Trawniki guards, recruited by ''SS-Hauptsturmführer'' Karl Streibel from among the Soviet prisoners of war,''Also:'' and by up to a thousand ''
Sonderkommando ''Sonderkommandos'' (, ''special unit'') were work units made up of German Nazi death camp prisoners. They were composed of prisoners, usually Jews, who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the disposal of gas chamber vi ...
'' prisoners whom the Trawniki guards used to terrorise. The ''SS'' called their volunteer guards " Hiwis", an abbreviation of ''Hilfswillige'' (lit. "willing to help"). According to the testimony of ''SS- Oberführer'' Arpad Wigand during his 1981 war crimes trial in Hamburg, only 25 percent of recruited collaborators could speak German. By mid-1942, two more death camps had been built on Polish lands: Sobibór (operational by May 1942) under the leadership of ''SS-Hauptsturmführer'' Franz Stangl, and
Treblinka Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The cam ...
(operational by July 1942) under ''SS-Obersturmführer'' Irmfried Eberl. The ''SS'' pumped exhaust fumes from a large internal-combustion engines through long pipes into sealed rooms, murdering the people inside by
carbon monoxide poisoning Carbon monoxide poisoning typically occurs from breathing in carbon monoxide (CO) at excessive levels. Symptoms are often described as " flu-like" and commonly include headache, dizziness, weakness, vomiting, chest pain, and confusion. Large ...
. Beginning in February–March 1943, the bodies of the dead were exhumed and cremated in pits. Treblinka, the last camp to become operational, used knowledge learned by the ''SS'' previously. With two powerful engines, run by ''SS-Scharführer''
Erich Fuchs Erich Fuchs (9 April 1902 – 25 July 1980) was an SS functionary who worked for the Action T4 mass-murder program, and for the Operation Reinhard phase of the Holocaust. Fuchs was charged with war crimes at the Bełżec Trial in 1963–64, fo ...
, and the gas chambers soon rebuilt of bricks and mortar, this death factory had murdered between 800,000 and 1,200,000 people within 15 months, disposed of their bodies, and sorted their belongings for shipment to Germany. The techniques used to deceive victims and the camps' overall layout were based on a pilot project of mobile killing conducted at the
Chełmno extermination camp , known for = , location = Near Chełmno nad Nerem, ''Reichsgau Wartheland'' (German-occupied Poland) , built by = , operated by = , commandant = Herbert Lange, Christian Wirth , original use = , construction = , in operatio ...
(''Kulmhof''), which entered operation in late 1941 and used
gas vans A gas van or gas wagon (russian: душегубка, ''dushegubka'', literally "soul killer"; german: Gaswagen) was a truck reequipped as a mobile gas chamber. During the World War II Holocaust, Nazi Germany developed and used gas vans on a larg ...
. Chełmno was not a part of Reinhard. It came under the direct control of ''SS- Standartenführer''
Ernst Damzog Ernst Damzog (30 October 1882 – 24 July 1945) was a German policeman, who was a member of the SS of Nazi Germany and served in the Gestapo. He was responsible for the mass murder of Poles and Jews committed in the territory of occupied Poland ...
, commander of the SD in '' Reichsgau Wartheland''. It was set up around a manor house similar to Sonnenstein. The use of gas vans had been previously tried and tested in the mass murder of Polish prisoners at Soldau, and in the extermination of Jews on the Russian Front by the ''
Einsatzgruppen (, ; also ' task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the im ...
''. Between early December 1941 and mid-April 1943, 160,000 Jews were sent to Chełmno from the General Government via the
Ghetto A ghetto, often called ''the'' ghetto, is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished ...
in
Łódź Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of ca ...
.Ghettos
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust h ...
Chełmno did not have crematoria; only the mass graves in the woods. It was a testing ground for the establishment of faster methods of murdering and incinerating people, marked by the construction of stationary facilities for the mass murder a few months later. The Reinhard death camps adapted progressively as each new site was built. Taken as a whole, Globočnik's camps at Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka had almost identical design, including staff members transferring between locations. The camps were situated within wooded areas well away from population centres. All were constructed near branch lines that linked to the '' Ostbahn''. Each camp had an unloading ramp at a fake railway station, as well as a reception area that contained undressing barracks, barber shops, and money depositories. Beyond the receiving zone, at each camp was a narrow, camouflaged path known as the ''Road to Heaven'' (called ''Himmelfahrtsstraße'' or ''der Schlauch'' by the ''SS''), which led to the extermination zone consisting of gas chambers, and the burial pits, up to deep, later replaced by cremation pyres with rails laid across the pits on concrete blocks; refuelled continuously by the '' Totenjuden''. Both Treblinka and Bełżec were equipped with powerful
crawler excavator Excavators are heavy construction equipment consisting of a boom, dipper (or stick), bucket and cab on a rotating platform known as the "house". The house sits atop an undercarriage with tracks or wheels. They are a natural progression fro ...
s from Polish construction sites in the vicinity, capable of most digging tasks without disrupting surfaces. At each camp, the ''SS'' guards and Ukrainian Trawnikis lived in a separate area from the Jewish work units. Wooden watchtowers and barbed-wire fences camouflaged with pine branches surrounded all camps. The killing centres had no electric fences, as the size of the prisoner '' Sonderkommandos'' (work units) remained comparatively easy to controlunlike in camps such as Dachau and Auschwitz. To assist with the arriving transports only specialised squads were kept alive, removing and disposing of bodies, and sorting property and valuables from the dead victims. The ''Totenjuden'' forced to work inside death zones were deliberately isolated from those who worked in the reception and sorting area. Periodically, those who worked in the death zones would be killed and replaced with new arrivals to remove any potential witnesses to the scale of the mass murder. ''Original:'' the Fourth Department of the
SMERSH SMERSH (russian: СМЕРШ) was an umbrella organization for three independent counter-intelligence agencies in the Red Army formed in late 1942 or even earlier, but officially announced only on 14 April 1943. The name SMERSH was coined by Josep ...
Directorate of Counterintelligence of the 2nd Belorussian Front, USSR (1978). Acquired by OSI in 1994
During ''Operation Reinhard'', Globočnik oversaw the systematic murder of more than 2,000,000 Jews from Poland,
Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...
,
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
, the Reich (Germany and Austria), the
Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
,
Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders wi ...
,
Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Cr ...
,
Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
and the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
. An undetermined number of
Roma Roma or ROMA may refer to: Places Australia * Roma, Queensland, a town ** Roma Airport ** Roma Courthouse ** Electoral district of Roma, defunct ** Town of Roma, defunct town, now part of the Maranoa Regional Council * Roma Street, Brisbane, a ...
were also murdered in these death camps, many of them children.


Extermination process

To achieve their intended purpose, all death camps used subterfuge and misdirection to conceal the truth and trick their victims into cooperation. This element had been developed in ''Aktion'' T4, when disabled and handicapped people were taken away for "special treatment" by the ''SS'' from "Gekrat" wearing white laboratory coats, thus giving the process an air of medical authenticity. After supposedly being assessed, the unsuspecting T4 patients were transported to killing centres. The same euphemism "special treatment" ('' Sonderbehandlung'') was used in
the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europ ...
. The ''SS'' used a variety of ruses to move thousands of new arrivals travelling in Holocaust trains to the disguised killing sites without panic. Mass deportations were called " resettlement actions"; they were organised by special Commissioners and conducted by uniformed police battalions from Orpo and Schupo in an atmosphere of terror. Usually, the deception was absolute; in August 1942, people of the Warsaw Ghetto lined up for several days to be "deported" to obtain bread allocated for travel. Jews unable to move or attempting to flee were shot on the spot. Even though death in the cattle cars from suffocation and thirst was rampant, affecting up to 20 percent of trainloads, most victims were willing to believe that the German intentions were different. Once alighted, the prisoners were ordered to leave their luggage behind and march directly to the "cleaning area" where they were asked to hand over their valuables for "safekeeping". Common tricks included the presence of a railway station with awaiting "medical personnel" and signs directing people to disinfection facilities. Treblinka also had a booking office with boards naming the connections for other camps further east. The Jews most apprehensive of danger were brutally beaten to speed up the process. At times, the new arrivals who had suitable skills were selected to join the ''Sonderkommando''. Once in the changing area, the men and boys were separated from the women and children and everyone was ordered to disrobe for a communal bath: "quicklythey were toldor the water will get cold". The old and sick, or slow, prisoners were taken to a fake infirmary named the ''Lazarett'', that had a large mass grave behind it. They were killed by a bullet in the neck, while the rest were being forced into the gas chambers. To drive the naked people into the execution barracks housing the gas chambers, the guards used whips, clubs, and rifle butts. Panic was instrumental in filling the gas chambers because the need to evade blows on their naked bodies forced the victims rapidly forward. Once packed tightly inside (to minimize available air), the steel air-tight doors with portholes were closed. The doors, according to Treblinka Museum research, originated from the Soviet military bunkers around
Białystok Białystok is the largest city in northeastern Poland and the capital of the Podlaskie Voivodeship. It is the tenth-largest city in Poland, second in terms of population density, and thirteenth in area. Białystok is located in the Białystok U ...
. Although other methods of extermination, such as the cyanic poison Zyklon B, were already in use at other Nazi killing centres such as Auschwitz, the ''Aktion Reinhard'' camps used lethal exhaust gases from captured Soviet tank engines. Fumes would be discharged directly into the gas chambers for a given period, then the engines would be switched off. ''SS'' guards would determine when to reopen the gas doors based on how long it took for the screaming to stop from within (usually 25 to 30 minutes). Special teams of camp inmates (''Sonderkommando'') would then remove the corpses on flatbed carts. Before the corpses were thrown into grave pits, gold teeth were removed from mouths, and orifices were searched for jewellery, currency, and other valuables. All acquired goods were managed by the '' SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt'' (Main ''SS'' Economic and Administrative Department). During the early phases of ''Operation Reinhard'', bodies were simply thrown into mass graves and covered with lime. From 1943, to hide the evidence of the crime, the victims remains were burned in open air pits. Special ''Leichenkommando'' (corpse units) had to exhume bodies from the mass graves around these death camps for incineration. ''Reinhard'' still left a paper trail; in January 1943,
Bletchley Park Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes (Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following ...
intercepted an SS telegram by ''SS- Sturmbannführer'' Hermann Höfle, Globočnik's deputy in Lublin, to ''SS- Obersturmbannführer''
Adolf Eichmann Otto Adolf Eichmann ( ,"Eichmann"
'' Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...
. The decoded Enigma message contained statistics showing a total of 1,274,166 arrivals at the four ''Aktion Reinhard'' camps until the end of 1942 but the British code-breakers did not understand the meaning of the message, which amounted to material evidence of how many people the Germans had murdered.


Camp commandants


Temporary substitution policy

In the winter of 1941, before the Wannsee Conference but after the commencement of
Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named afte ...
, the Nazis' need for forced labor greatly intensified. Himmler and Heydrich approved a Jewish substitution policy in Upper Silesia and in Galicia under the " extermination through labour" doctrine. Many Poles had already been sent to the Reich, creating a labour shortage in the General Government. Around March 1942, while the first extermination camp (Bełżec) began gassing, the deportation trains arriving in the Lublin reservation from Germany and Slovakia were searched for the Jewish skilled workers. After selection, they were delivered to Majdan Tatarski instead of for "special treatment" at Bełżec. For a short time, these Jewish laborers were temporarily spared death, while their families and all others were murdered. Some were relegated to work at a nearby airplane factory or as forced labor in the ''SS''-controlled ''
Strafkompanie Strafkompanie ("Punitive Unit") is the German word for the penal work division in the Nazi concentration camps. ''SK'' was the abbreviation used in the concentration camps for the notorious ''Strafkompanies''. These penal divisions were yet anoth ...
s'' and other work camps. Hermann Höfle was one of the chief supporters and implementers of this policy. There were problems with food supplies and the ensuing logistical challenges. Globočnik and
Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger (8 May 1894 – 10 May 1945) was a German war criminal and paramilitary commander acting as a high-ranking member of the SA and the SS. Between 1939 and 1943 he was the Higher SS and Police Leader in the General Govern ...
complained and the mass transfer was stopped even before the three extermination camps were operational.


Disposition of the property of the victims

Approximately 178 million German Reichsmarks' worth of Jewish property (equivalent to million
euro The euro ( symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens . ...
s) was taken from the victims, with vast transfers of gold and valuables to the Reichsbank's "Melmer" account, Gold Pool, and monetary reserve. Not only the German authorities were in receipt of Jewish property, because corruption was rife within the death camps. Many of the individual ''SS'' members and policemen involved in the murders took cash, property, and valuables for themselves. The higher-ranking ''SS'' men stole on an enormous scale. It was a common practice among the top echelon. Two Majdanek commandants, Karl-Otto Koch and Hermann Florstedt, were tried by the ''SS'' for it in April 1945. ''SS- Sturmbannführer''
Georg Konrad Morgen Georg Konrad Morgen (8 June 1909 – 4 February 1982) was an SS judge and lawyer who investigated crimes committed in Nazi concentration camps. He rose to the rank of SS-''Sturmbannführer'' (major). After the war, Morgen served as witness at s ...
, an ''SS'' judge from the ''SS'' Courts Office, prosecuted so many Nazi officers for individual violations that Himmler personally ordered him to restrain his cases by April 1944.


Aftermath and cover up

Operation Reinhard ended in November 1943. Most of the staff and guards were then sent to northern Italy for further ''Aktion'' against Jews and local partisans. Globočnik went to the San Sabba concentration camp, where he supervised the detention, torture and murder of
political prisoner A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although nu ...
s. To cover up the mass murder of more than two million people in Poland during Operation Reinhard, the Nazis implemented the secret '' Sonderaktion 1005'', also called ''Aktion 1005'' or '' Enterdungsaktion'' (" exhumation action"). The operation, which began in 1942 and continued until the end of 1943, was designed to remove all traces that mass murder. '' Leichenkommando'' ("corpse units") comprising camp prisoners were created to exhume mass graves and cremate the buried bodies, using giant grills made from wood and railway tracks. Afterwards, bone fragments were ground up in special milling machines, and all remains were then re-buried in new pits. The ''Aktion'' was overseen by squads of Trawniki guards. After the war, some of the ''SS'' officers and guards were tried and sentenced at the
Nuremberg trials The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies of World War II, Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II. Between 1939 and 1945 ...
for their role in ''Operation Reinhard'' and ''Sonderaktion 1005''. Many others escaped conviction, such as
Ernst Lerch Ernst Lerch (19 November 1914 – 1997) was said to be one of the most important men of Operation Reinhard (german: Aktion Reinhard), responsible for "Jewish affairs" and the mass murder of the Jews in the General Government (''Generalgouverne ...
, Globočnik's deputy and chief of his Main Office, whose case was dropped for lack of witness testimony.


See also

* Action 14f13 (1941–44), a Nazi extermination operation that killed prisoners who were sick, elderly, or deemed no longer fit for work * ''
Aktion Erntefest Operation Harvest Festival (german: Aktion Erntefest) was the murder of up to 43,000 Jews at the Majdanek, Poniatowa and Trawniki concentration camps by the SS, the Order Police battalions, and the Ukrainian '' Sonderdienst'' on 3–4 Novem ...
'' (November 1943), an operation to murder all the remaining Jews in the Lublin Ghetto *
August Frank memorandum The August Frank memorandum of 26 September 1942 was a directive from SS Lieutenant General () August Frank of the SS concentration camp administration department (SS-WVHA). The memorandum provides a measure of the detailed planning that Fran ...
theft of victim's property * Operation Reinhard in Warsaw (''Grossaktion Warsaw'', July 1942), a similar operation to move Jews to the death camps *
Katzmann Report The Katzmann Report (or the Final Report by Katzmann) is one of the most important testimonies relating to the Holocaust in Poland and the extermination of Polish Jews during World War II. It was used as evidence in the Nuremberg Trials (USA No. L ...
(1943), a document detailing the outcome of Operation Reinhard in southern Poland. *
Korherr Report The Korherr Report is a 16-page document on the progress of the Holocaust in German-controlled Europe. It was delivered to Heinrich Himmler on March 23, 1943, by the chief inspector of the statistical bureau of the '' SS'' and professional statis ...
, a report from the ''SS'' statistical bureau detailing how many Jews remained alive in Nazi Germany and occupied Europe in 1943 * Operation Reinhard in Kraków (June 1942), the clearance of the Jewish ghetto


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* * document size 20.2 MB. Monograph, chapt. 3: with list of Catholic rescuers of Jews who escaped from Treblinka; selected testimonies, bibliography, alphabetical indexes, photographs, English language summaries, and forewords by Holocaust scholars. * * ''See Smith's book excerpts at:'
Hershl Sperling: Personal Testimony
by David Adams. {{coord missing, Poland
Reinhard Reinhard is a German, Austrian, Danish, and to a lesser extent Norwegian surname (from Germanic ''ragin'', counsel, and ''hart'', strong), and a spelling variant of Reinhardt. Persons with the given name *Reinhard of Blankenburg (after 1107 – 11 ...
Heinrich Himmler Holocaust massacres and pogroms in Poland Reinhard Heydrich