Aktion Reinhard

or ''Einsatz Reinhard''
, location = Occupied Poland
, date = October 1941 – November 1943
, incident_type = Mass deportations to extermination camps
, 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

Additional:

Chełmno
Majdanek
Auschwitz II
, ghetto = European and Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland including Białystok, Częstochowa, Kraków, Lublin, Łódź, Warsaw 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.

Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt (german: Aktion Reinhard or ; also or ) was the codename of the secret German plan in World War II to exterminate Polish Jews in the General Government district of German- occupied Poland. This deadliest phase of the Holocaust was marked by the introduction of extermination camps.

As many as two million Jews were sent to Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka 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, near the earlier-established Auschwitz I 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 district of German- occupied Poland. Within months, three top-secret camps (at Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka) were built to efficiently murder tens of thousands of Jews every day.

These camps differed from Auschwitz and Majdanek, because the latter operated as forced-labour camps 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. ''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 Czechoslovakian 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'' 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 (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. 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''. Between early December 1941 and mid-April 1943, 160,000 Jews were sent to Chełmno from the General Government via the Ghetto in Łódź.Ghettos
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 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, 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, France, the Reich (Germany and Austria), the Netherlands, Greece, Hungary, Italy and the Soviet Union. An undetermined number of Roma 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 ''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. 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 intercepted an SS telegram by ''SS- Sturmbannführer'' Hermann Höfle, Globočnik's deputy in Lublin, to ''SS- Obersturmbannführer'' Adolf Eichmann