Richard Thomalla (; 23 October 1903 – 12 May 1945) was a German war criminal and SS commander of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

. A

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing i ...

by profession, he was head of the SS Central Building Administration at Lublin reservation in

occupied Poland ' (Norwegian language, Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV 2 (Norway), TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. ...

. Thomalla was in charge of construction for the

Operation Reinhard Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt ( or ; also or ) was the codename of the secret Nazi Germany, German plan in World War II to exterminate History of the Jews in Poland, Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied ...

death camps

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 ...

Sobibor Sobibor ( ; ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), ...

and

Treblinka Treblinka () was the second-deadliest extermination camp to be built and operated by Nazi Germany in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the Treblinka, ...

during the

Holocaust in Poland The Holocaust saw the ghettoization, robbery, deportation and mass murder of Jews, alongside other groups under similar racial pretexts in occupied Poland by the Nazi Germany. Over three million Polish Jews were murdered, primarily at the ...

Operation Reinhardt

Born in Annahof in the former

Upper Silesia Upper Silesia ( ; ; ; ; Silesian German: ; ) is the southeastern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia, located today mostly in Poland, with small parts in the Czech Republic. The area is predominantly known for its heav ...

region of the

German Empire The German Empire (),; ; World Book, Inc. ''The World Book dictionary, Volume 1''. World Book, Inc., 2003. p. 572. States that Deutsches Reich translates as "German Realm" and was a former official name of Germany. also referred to as Imperia ...

(now, the village of Sowin, Opole Voivodeship, Poland). Thomalla became a member of the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...

in 1932: (no. 1,238,872) and ''

Schutzstaffel The ''Schutzstaffel'' (; ; SS; also stylised with SS runes as ''ᛋᛋ'') was a major paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It beg ...

'' (SS no. 41,206). The first death camp to be constructed under Thomalla's supervision was

. Construction started on 1 November 1941 and was completed in March 1942. He then proceeded to design and supervise the construction of

in March 1942. Workers employed for building the camp were local people from neighboring villages and towns. Klee, Ernst, Dressen, Willi, Riess, Volker ''The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders'', p. 231. . These workers consisted of about eighty Jews from ghettos within the vicinity of the camp. A squad of ten watchmen trained at

Trawniki concentration camp The Trawniki was a Nazi concentration camps, concentration camp set up by Nazi Germany in the village of Trawniki about southeast of Lublin during the occupation of Poland in World War II. Throughout its existence the camp served a dual function ...

guarded these workers. Upon completion of the camp, these Jews were shot. When Thomalla completed his building assignment in Sobibor he was replaced there as commandant by

Franz Stangl Franz Paul Stangl (; 26 March 1908 – 28 June 1971) was an Austrian police officer and commandant of the Nazi extermination camps Sobibor and Treblinka in World War II. Stangl, an employee of the T-4 Euthanasia Program and an SS commander ...

in April 1942. He then proceeded to

which copied the design of Sobibor, with some improvements. SS commander Erwin Lambert who had previously been assigned to the

Action T4 (German, ) was a campaign of Homicide#By state actors, mass murder by involuntary euthanasia which targeted Disability, people with disabilities and the mentally ill in Nazi Germany. The term was first used in post-WWII, war trials against d ...

euthanasia Euthanasia (from : + ) is the practice of intentionally ending life to eliminate pain and suffering. Different countries have different Legality of euthanasia, euthanasia laws. The British House of Lords Select committee (United Kingdom), se ...

program and had constructed the new gas chambers in Treblinka, testified about Thomalla: Between July 1942 and October 1943, around 850,000 people were murdered in Treblinka. Thomalla was reportedly executed by the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

(Soviet secret police) in

Jičín Jičín (; or ''Gitschin'') is a town in the Hradec Králové Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 16,000 inhabitants. The historic town centre is well preserved and is protected as an Cultural monument (Czech Republic)#Monument reservatio ...

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 ...

on 12 May 1945.

Ernst Klee Ernst Klee (15 March 1942, Frankfurt – 18 May 2013, Frankfurt) was a German journalist and author. As a writer on Germany's history, he was best known for his exposure and documentation of medical crimes in Nazi Germany, much of which was conce ...

. ''Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich: Wer war was vor und nach 1945''. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thomalla, Richard 1903 births 1945 deaths Executed German mass murderers Executed Nazi concentration camp commandants German civil engineers Holocaust perpetrators in Poland People executed by Allied occupation forces Nazis executed by the Soviet Union by firearm Operation Reinhard People from Nysa County People from the Province of Silesia People killed in NKVD operations SS-Hauptsturmführer