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

. 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 ...

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

Lublin reservation The Nisko Plan was an operation to deport Jews to the Lublin District of the General Governorate of occupied Poland in 1939. Organized by Nazi Germany, the plan was cancelled in early 1940. The idea for the expulsion and resettlement of the Jews ...

occupied Poland ' (Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. Season 2 premiered on 10 October 2 ...

. Thomalla was in charge of construction for the

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 ...

death camps

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 ...

Sobibor 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 an ...

and

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 ...

during the

Holocaust in Poland The Holocaust in Poland was part of the European-wide Holocaust organized by Nazi Germany and took place in German-occupied Poland. During the genocide, three million Polish Jews were murdered, half of all Jews murdered during the Holocaust. ...

Operation Reinhardt

Born in Annahof in the former

Upper Silesia Upper Silesia ( pl, Górny Śląsk; szl, Gůrny Ślůnsk, Gōrny Ślōnsk; cs, Horní Slezsko; german: Oberschlesien; Silesian German: ; la, Silesia Superior) is the southeastern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia, located ...

region of the

German Empire The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...

(now, the village of

Sowin, Opole Voivodeship Sowin (german: Sabine) is a village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a populatio ...

, Poland). Thomalla became a member of 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 1932: (no. 1,238,872) and 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 concentration camp was 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. It was organized on the gr ...

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-born police officer and commandant of the Nazi extermination camps Sobibor and Treblinka. Stangl, an employee of the T-4 Euthanasia Program and an SS commander in Nazi German ...

in April 1942. He then proceeded to

which copied the design of Sobibor, with some improvements. SS commander

Erwin Lambert Erwin Hermann Lambert (7 December 1909 – 15 October 1976) was a perpetrator of the Holocaust. In profession, he was a master mason, building trades foreman, Nazi Party member and member of the ''Schutzstaffel'' with the rank of SS-''Unterscha ...

who had previously been assigned to the

Action T4 (German, ) was a campaign of mass murder by involuntary euthanasia in Nazi Germany. The term was first used in post-war trials against doctors who had been involved in the killings. The name T4 is an abbreviation of 4, a street address of ...

euthanasia Euthanasia (from el, εὐθανασία 'good death': εὖ, ''eu'' 'well, good' + θάνατος, ''thanatos'' 'death') is the practice of intentionally ending life to eliminate pain and suffering. Different countries have different eut ...

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 (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...

(Soviet secret police) in

Jičín Jičín (; german: Jitschin 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 by law as an Cultural monument (Czech Republi ...

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

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 concer ...

. ''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 Holocaust perpetrators in Poland People from Nysa County People from the Province of Silesia Nazi leaders assassinated by the Allies German civil engineers Operation Reinhard SS-Hauptsturmführer Executed Nazi concentration camp personnel People killed in NKVD operations Nazis executed by the Soviet Union by firearm Executed mass murderers