' 1005 (, 'Special Action 1005'), also called ''Aktion'' 1005 or ' (, 'Exhumation Action'), was a
top-secret
Classified information is material that a government body deems to be sensitive information that must be protected. Access is restricted by law or regulation to particular groups of people with the necessary security clearance and need to know, ...
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) 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 ...
, the attempted (and largely
successful) extermination of all
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 ...
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 vict ...
'' prisoners, officially called ''Leichenkommandos'' ("corpse units"), were forced to exhume
mass graves
A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of execution, although an exact ...
and burn the bodies; inmates were often put in chains to prevent them from escaping.
The project was put in place to destroy evidence of the genocide that had been committed by the
Order Police battalions
The Order Police battalions were militarised formations of the German Order Police (uniformed police) during the Nazi era. During World War II, they were subordinated to the SS and deployed in German-occupied areas, specifically the Army Group ...
and ''
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 ...
'', the German death squads who murdered millions, including more than 1 million Jews,
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 ...
and
Slavs
Slavs are the largest European ethnolinguistic group. They speak the various Slavic languages, belonging to the larger Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout northern Eurasia, main ...
. The ''Aktion'' was overseen by selected squads of the ''
Sicherheitsdienst
' (, ''Security Service''), full title ' (Security Service of the ''Reichsführer-SS''), or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence organization ...
'' (SD) and the uniformed
Order Police
The ''Ordnungspolizei'' (), abbreviated ''Orpo'', meaning "Order Police", were the uniformed police force in Nazi Germany from 1936 to 1945. The Orpo organisation was absorbed into the Nazi monopoly on power after regional police jurisdiction w ...
.
Operations
In March 1942,
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( ; ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust.
He was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (inclu ...
, head of the
Reich Security Main Office
The Reich Security Main Office (german: Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA) was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as ''Chef der Deutschen Polizei'' (Chief of German Police) and ''Reichsführer-SS'', the head of the Nazi ...
, placed high-ranking SS functionary
Paul Blobel
Paul Blobel (13 August 1894 – 7 June 1951) was a German ''Sicherheitsdienst'' (SD) commander and convicted war criminal who played a leading role in the Holocaust. He organised and executed the Babi Yar massacre, the largest massacre of th ...
in charge of the ''Aktion 1005'', but its start was delayed after Heydrich was assassinated in early June 1942. It was after the end of June that
Heinrich Müller Heinrich Müller may refer to:
* Heinrich Müller (cyclist) (born 1926), Swiss cyclist
* Heinrich Müller (footballer, born 1888) (1888–1957), Swiss football player and manager
* Heinrich Müller (footballer, born 1909) (1909–2000), Austrian ...
, head 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 ...
, finally gave Blobel his orders. While the principal aim was to erase evidence of Jewish exterminations, the ''Aktion'' would also include non-Jewish victims of Nazi persecution.
Blobel began his work experimenting 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 operation ...
(Kulmhof). Attempts to use
incendiary bombs
Incendiary weapons, incendiary devices, incendiary munitions, or incendiary bombs are weapons designed to start fires or destroy sensitive equipment using fire (and sometimes used as anti-personnel weaponry), that use materials such as napalm, th ...
to destroy exhumed bodies were unsuccessful, as the weapons set fire to nearby forests. The most effective way was eventually found to be a giant pyres on iron grills. The method involved building alternating layers of corpses and firewood on railway tracks. After the pyre burned down, remaining bone fragments could be crushed by pounding with heavy dowels or in a grinding machine and then re-buried in pits. The operation officially began at
Sobibór extermination camp
Sobibor (, Polish: ) 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 German-occupied Poland.
As a ...
. The ''Leichenkommando'' exhumed the bodies from mass graves around the camp and then burned them; their work done, they themselves were then executed. The process then moved to
Bełżec
Belzec (English: or , Polish: ) was a Nazi German extermination camp built by the SS for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to murder all History of Jews in Poland, Polish Jews, a major part of the "Fina ...
in November 1942. The
Auschwitz
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 con ...
and
Majdanek
Majdanek (or Lublin) was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, a ...
camps had crematoria with furnace rooms on site to dispose of the bodies and so the ''Aktion 1005'' commandos were not needed there. "Surplus" corpses were burned by their own prisoners ''(pictured)''.
The semi-industrial incineration of corpses at the
Treblinka extermination camp
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 ...
began as soon as the political danger associated with the earlier burials was realised. In 1943, the 22,000 Polish victims of the Soviet
Katyn massacre
The Katyn massacre, "Katyń crime"; russian: link=yes, Катынская резня ''Katynskaya reznya'', "Katyn massacre", or russian: link=no, Катынский расстрел, ''Katynsky rasstrel'', "Katyn execution" was a series of m ...
were discovered near
Smolensk
Smolensk ( rus, Смоленск, p=smɐˈlʲensk, a=smolensk_ru.ogg) is a city and the administrative center of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Dnieper River, west-southwest of Moscow. First mentioned in 863, it is one of the oldest c ...
and reported to Adolf Hitler. Their remains were well preserved underground, attesting to the Soviet mass murder. By April 1943,
Nazi propaganda
The propaganda used by the German Nazi Party in the years leading up to and during Adolf Hitler's dictatorship of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 to 1945 was a crucial instrument for acquiring and maintaining power, and for the implementation o ...
began to draw attention of the international community to that war crime. The
Katyn Commission
The Katyn Commission or the International Katyn Commission was a committee formed in April 1943 under request by Germany to investigate the Katyn massacre of some 22,000 Polish nationals during the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland, mostly pri ...
was formed to make detailed examinations in an effort to drive a wedge between the
Allies
An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
. Meanwhile, the secret orders to exhume mass graves and instead to burn the hundreds of thousands of victims came directly from the Nazi leadership in April. also a Google Books preview /ref> The corpses that had been buried at Treblinka with the use of a crawler excavator were dug up and cremated on the orders of
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
himself, who visited the camp in March 1943. The instructions to utilise rails as grates came from
Herbert Floss
Herbert Floss or Herbert Floß (25 August 1912 – 22 October 1943) was an SS functionary of Nazi Germany who served as acting commander of the Sobibor extermination camp during the Holocaust in Poland. He also served as cremation expert in Camp ...
, the camp's cremation expert. The bodies were placed on cremation pyres that were up to long, with rails laid across the pits on concrete blocks. They were splashed with petrol over wood and burned in one massive blaze attended by roughly 300 prisoners, who operated the pyres. In Bełżec, the round-the-clock operation lasted until March 1943.Operation Reinhard: "The attempt to remove traces" (reprint) Nizkor.org 2012. Retrieved 5 June 2014. In Treblinka, it went on at full speed until the end of July."Treblinka" ''
Holocaust Encyclopedia
The ''Holocaust Encyclopedia'' is an online encyclopedia, published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, offering detailed information about The Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European ...
'' (10 June 2013). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 5 June 2014.
The operation also returned to the scenes of earlier mass killings such as
Babi Yar
Babi Yar (russian: Ба́бий Яр) or Babyn Yar ( uk, Бабин Яр) is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and a site of massacres carried out by Nazi Germany's forces during its campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II. The fi ...
Ninth Fort
The Ninth Fort ( lt, Devintas Fortas) is a stronghold in the northern part of Šilainiai elderate, Kaunas, Lithuania. It is a part of the Kaunas Fortress, which was constructed in the late 19th century. During the occupation of Kaunas and th ...
, as well as
Bronna Góra
Bronna Góra (or Bronna Mount in English, be, Бронная Гара, ) is the name of a secluded area in present-day Belarus where mass killings of Polish Jews were carried out by Nazi Germany during World War II. The location was part of the ...
. By 1944, with Soviet armies advancing,
Wilhelm Koppe
Karl Heinrich Wilhelm Koppe (15 June 1896 – 2 July 1975) was a German Nazi commander ('' Höhere SS und Polizeiführer (HSSPF), SS-Obergruppenführer''). He was responsible for numerous atrocities against Poles and Jews in Reichsgau Warthelan ...
, head of the ''
Reichsgau Wartheland
The ''Reichsgau Wartheland'' (initially ''Reichsgau Posen'', also: ''Warthegau'') was a Nazi German ''Reichsgau'' formed from parts of Polish territory annexed in 1939 during World War II. It comprised the region of Greater Poland and adjacent a ...
'', ordered that each of the five districts of
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 ...
territory set up its own Aktion 1005 commando to begin "cleaning" mass graves. The operations were not entirely successful, as the advancing Soviet troops reached some of the sites before they could be cleared.
Aftermath
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 ...
Dieter Wisliceny
Dieter Wisliceny (13 January 1911 – 4 May 1948) was a member of the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) and one of the deputies of Adolf Eichmann, helping to organise and coordinate the wide scale deportations of the Jews across Europe during the Holocaust.
...
, gave the following testimony on ''Aktion 1005'':
Blobel was sentenced to death by the US
Nuremberg Military Tribunal
The subsequent Nuremberg trials were a series of 12 military tribunals for war crimes against members of the leadership of Nazi Germany between December 1946 and April 1949. They followed the first and best-known Nuremberg trial before the Int ...
Landsberg Prison
Landsberg Prison is a penal facility in the town of Landsberg am Lech in the southwest of the German state of Bavaria, about west-southwest of Munich and south of Augsburg. It is best known as the prison where Adolf Hitler was held in 1924, a ...
on June 7, 1951. Nearly 60,000 deaths are attributable to Blobel, but during his testimony at Nuremberg, he claimed that he killed only 10,000 to 15,000 people.
The prosecution at the trial of Eichmann in 1961 attempted to prove that Eichmann was Blobel's superior, but the court did not accept it. Blobel's superior was actually
Heinrich Müller Heinrich Müller may refer to:
* Heinrich Müller (cyclist) (born 1926), Swiss cyclist
* Heinrich Müller (footballer, born 1888) (1888–1957), Swiss football player and manager
* Heinrich Müller (footballer, born 1909) (1909–2000), Austrian ...