Aktion Reinhard
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Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt ( or ; also or ) was the codename of the secret German plan in
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
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 Jews, Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the long pe ...
in the
General Government The General Government (, ; ; ), formally the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (), was a German zone of occupation established after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Slovak Republic (1939–1945), Slovakia and the Soviet ...
district of German- occupied Poland. This deadliest phase of
the Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
was marked by the introduction of extermination camps. The operation proceeded from March 1942 to November 1943; about 1.47 million or more Jews were murdered in just 100 days from late July to early November 1942, a rate which is approximately 83% higher than the commonly suggested figure for the kill rate in the
Rwandan genocide The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occurred from 7 April to 19 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. Over a span of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Gre ...
. In the time frame of July to October 1942, the overall death toll, including all killings of Jews and not just Operation Reinhard, amounted to two million killed in those four months alone. It was the single fastest rate of genocidal killing in history. During the operation, as many as two million Jews were sent to
Bełżec Belzec (English: or , Polish: , approximately ) was a Nazi German extermination camp in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), occupied Poland. It was built by the SS for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to ...
, Sobibór, and Treblinka to be murdered in purpose-built
gas chamber A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. Poisonous agents used include hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide. History Donatie ...
s. 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, near the earlier-established Auschwitz I camp.


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 Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( , ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a German high-ranking SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust. He held the rank of SS-. Many historians regard 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 (, ; ; ), formally the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (), was a German zone of occupation established after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Slovak Republic (1939–1945), Slovakia and the Soviet ...
district of German- occupied Poland. Within months, three top-secret camps (at
Bełżec Belzec (English: or , Polish: , approximately ) was a Nazi German extermination camp in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), occupied Poland. It was built by the SS for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to ...
, Sobibór, and Treblinka) were built to efficiently murder tens of thousands of Jews every day. These camps differed from Auschwitz and Majdanek, which initially operated as forced-labour camps before facilities for mass death were installed (gas chambers, crematoria etc.) Even after becoming death camps fitted with crematoria, ''konzentrationslager'' like Auschwitz remained largely dedicated to forced labor. Unlike "mixed" extermination camps, the extermination camps of Operation Reinhard kept no prisoners, except as needed to advance the camp's industrial-scale murder. Very few Jews 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. ''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 Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...
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 Belzec (English: or , Polish: , approximately ) was a Nazi German extermination camp in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), occupied Poland. It was built by the SS for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to ...
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 Organisation Todt (OT; ) was a Civil engineering, civil and military engineering organisation in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, named for its founder, Fritz Todt, an engineer and senior member of the Nazi Party. The organisation was responsible ...
 (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 From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps (), including subcamp (SS), subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe. The first camps were established in March 1933 immediately af ...
system, which was run by the ''
SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV; or 'SS Death's Head Battalions') was a major branch of the Nazi Party's paramilitary (SS) organisation. It was responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps, concentration camps and extermination camps of Nazi Germany ...
'' 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'' 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 __NOTOC__ ''Oberführer'' (short: ''Oberf'', , ) was an early paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) dating back to 1921. An ''Oberführer'' was typically an NSDAP member in charge of a group of paramilitary units in a particular geograph ...
'' 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 (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, 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 (''Kulmhof''), which entered operation in late 1941 and used gas vans. Chełmno was not a part of Reinhard. It came under the direct control of ''SS- Standartenführer'' Ernst Damzog, 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 imp ...
''. Between early December 1941 and mid-April 1943, 160,000 Jews were sent to Chełmno from the General Government via the Ghetto in
Łódź Łódź is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located south-west of Warsaw. Łódź has a population of 655,279, making it the country's List of cities and towns in Polan ...
.Ghettos
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust, dedicated to the documentation, study, and interpretation of the Holocaust. Opened in 1993, the museum explores the Holocaust through p ...
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 excavators 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 Directorate of Counterintelligence of the
2nd Belorussian Front The 2nd Belorussian Front (, ''Vtoroi Belorusskiy front'', also romanized "Byelorussian SSR, Byelorussian"), was a Front (military formation), major formation of the Soviet Army during World War II, being equivalent to a Western army group. I ...
, USSR (1978). Acquired by OSI in 1994
During ''Operation Reinhard'', Globočnik oversaw the systematic murder of more than 2,000,000 Jews from Poland,
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,
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, the
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(Germany and Austria), the
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,
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,
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,
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and the
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. An undetermined number of Roma were also
murdered Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse committed with the necessary intention as defined by the law in a specific jurisdiction. ("The killing of another person without justification or excu ...
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 (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
. 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. 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 List of cities and towns in Poland, tenth-largest city in Poland, second in terms of population density, and thirteenth in area. Biał ...
. 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 The SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (; SS-WVHA) was a Nazi organization responsible for managing the finances, supply systems and business projects of the (a main branch of the ; SS). It also ran the Nazi concentration camps, concentr ...
'' (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 Bletchley Park estate, estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes (Buckinghamshire), that became the principal centre of Allies of World War II, Allied World War II cryptography, code-breaking during the S ...
intercepted an SS telegram by ''SS- Sturmbannführer'' Hermann Höfle, Globočnik's deputy in Lublin, to ''SS- Obersturmbannführer'' Adolf Eichmann in
Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
. 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 was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along ...
, 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 '' Strafkompanies'' 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 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 (currency symbol, symbol: euro sign, €; ISO 4217, currency code: EUR) is the official currency of 20 of the Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Union. This group of states is officially known as the ...
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, 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 ...
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 for their role in ''Operation Reinhard'' and ''Sonderaktion 1005''. Many others escaped conviction, such as Ernst Lerch, 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'' (November 1943), an operation to murder all the remaining Jews in the Lublin Ghetto * August Frank memorandum 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 (1943), a document detailing the outcome of Operation Reinhard in southern Poland. * Korherr Report, 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


Footnotes


Citations


References

* * 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 Heinrich Himmler Holocaust massacres and pogroms in Poland Reinhard Heydrich Reserve Police Battalion 101