Franz Karl Reichleitner (2 December 1906 – 3 January 1944) was an Austrian member in the SS of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

who participated in

Operation 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 L ...

during

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 Europe; a ...

. Reichleitner served as the second and last commandant of Sobibór extermination camp from 1 September 1942 until the camp's closure on or about 17 October 1943.The Holocaust: Lest we forget: Extermination camp Sobibor
/ref> As the commanding officer of the camp, Franz Reichleitner directly perpetrated the

genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

SS career

Reichleitner joined the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

in 1936 as member number 6,369,213 and the

Schutzstaffel The ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS; also stylized as ''ᛋᛋ'' with Armanen runes; ; "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe d ...

in 1937 as member number 357,065. He began his career as a ''Kriminalsekretär'' of the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...

Linz Linz ( , ; cs, Linec) is the capital of Upper Austria and third-largest city in Austria. In the north of the country, it is on the Danube south of the Czech border. In 2018, the population was 204,846. In 2009, it was a European Capital of ...

. Later Reichleitner was assigned to work in the Action T4 euthanasia program at the nearby

Hartheim Euthanasia Centre The Hartheim killing centre (german: NS-Tötungsanstalt Hartheim, sometimes translated as "Hartheim killing facility" or "Hartheim euthanasia centre") was a killing facility involved in the Nazi programme known as ''Aktion T4'', in which German ...

. He first served as an assistant supervisor (together with Franz Stangl) under officer Christian Wirth before assuming Wirth's position of chief supervisor at Hartheim. Reichleitner was also partly responsible for getting Stangl a supervising job in T-4.

Henry Friedlander Henry Egon Friedlander (24 September 1930 – 17 October 2012) was a German-American Jewish historian of the Holocaust who was noted for his arguments in favor of broadening the scope of casualties of the Holocaust. Born in Berlin, Germany, to a ...

(1995). ''The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution'', Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, pp. 100, 204-206. Reichleitner was married to Anna Baumgartner from

Steyr Steyr (; Central Bavarian: ''Steia'') is a statutory city, located in the Austrian federal state of Upper Austria. It is the administrative capital, though not part of Steyr-Land District. Steyr is Austria's 12th most populated town and the 3rd l ...

Gitta Sereny Gitta Sereny, CBE (13 March 192114 June 2012) was an Austrian-British biographer, historian, and investigative journalist who came to be known for her interviews and profiles of infamous figures, including Mary Bell, who was convicted in 1968 of ...

. ''Into That Darkness: from Mercy Killing to Mass Murder, a study of Franz Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka'' (1974
second edition 1995

Sobibor death camp

On 1 September 1942, at the rank of ''SS- Obersturmführer'' (First Lieutenant), on the orders of Wirth and Odilo Globocnik, Reichleitner took command of the Sobibór extermination camp with Franz Stangl's departure to

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 camp ...

. Reichleitner rarely showed his face in the camp, and it has been claimed that he was a heavy drinker, but his reign of Sobibór was even more strict than that of his predecessor. Moshe Bahir, a camp inmate, wrote:

Reichleitner, a man in his late forties, with an Austrian accent, was dressed always with great elegance and wore gloves. He did not have direct contact with the Jews and the transports. He knew that he could rely on his subordinates, who were very frightened of him. He ran the camp with German precision. During his time the ''Aktionen'' went smoothly, and all the transports that arrived on a certain day were liquidated. He never left them for the following day... Yitzhak Arad (1987). ''Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 188-189.

On one occasion, when an old man from the transports slapped SS officer Karl Frenzel, Reichleitner took the man aside and shot him on the spot in front of his family and the entire convoy of people.

Sobibor revolt

After '' Reichsführer-SS'' Heinrich Himmler visited Sobibór on 12 February 1943, he promoted Reichleitner to ''SS- Hauptsturmführer'' (Captain). Reichleitner was on leave on the day of the successful Sobibór revolt, 14 October 1943. With about 300 of the 600 prisoners having escaped, the remainder were shot dead per the direct orders of Himmler. Sobibór was closed within a few days and the Nazis attempted to remove any traces of its existence. In autumn 1943, like so many of the perpetrators of Operation Reinhard, Reichleitner was then transferred to the

Fiume Rijeka ( , , ; also known as Fiume hu, Fiume, it, Fiume ; local Chakavian: ''Reka''; german: Sankt Veit am Flaum; sl, Reka) is the principal seaport and the third-largest city in Croatia (after Zagreb and Split). It is located in Primor ...

area of Italy to kill Jews and quell the partisan resistance movement there. Reichleitner was killed by partisans on 3 January 1944 at

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 re ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Reichleitner, Franz 1906 births 1944 deaths People from Kirchdorf an der Krems District Aktion T4 personnel Assassinated Nazis Austrian Nazis Austrian police officers Gestapo personnel Nazi concentration camp commandants Sobibor extermination camp personnel SS-Hauptsturmführer Holocaust perpetrators in Poland