Organization of Operation Reinhard

Contents

 

Annotation 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Introduction

    The first thing that comes to many people's minds when they think of the Holocaust is the Auschwitz concentration camp where about 1 million people, mainly Jews, were gassed to death between 1941 and 1945. In some ways, Auschwitz has come to symbolize the Holocaust. On the other hand, the names Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor are nowhere nearly as well known. Yet, it is estimated that 1.7 million Jews were gassed to death in those camps in just two years - 1942 and 1943. These are the Operation Reinhard death camps.

    The Operation Reinhard camps stand out from the other camps where Jews were exterminated in two main ways. First, their only purpose was to kill Jews. They contributed nothing else to the German war effort unless it happened to be a byproduct of the killing. The money, the jewels, the clothing: none of these was the reason for the existence of the camps. They were merely a collateral advantage gained from them. Killing was the only reason for the camps, and as soon as there was no one left to kill, the camps were dismantled. And it must be remembered that the victims here were ordinary men, women and children who were killed because, and only because, they were Jews.

    Second, they were lethal in their efficiency. Unlike some of the other camps, there were very few survivors of the Operation Reinhard camps. One person survived Belzec. Only around one hundred survived Treblinka. Yet, these two camps killed between them about 1,350,000 Jews. This translates into a killing "efficiency rate" of 99.99%.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Operation Reinhard

    Operation Reinhard was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the General Government, and marked the beginning of the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, the use of extermination camps. During the operation, as many as two million people were murdered in Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka, almost all of whom were Jews.

Background

    The Operation Reinhard death camps were an integral part of the so-called «final solution of the Jewish question». Since the Nazis had taken power in 1933, they had gradually isolated the Jewish community in Germany and Austria, and deprived them of their rights as citizens, and their property. Now four pivotal events occurred.

    First, with the outbreak of World War II, and the subsequent conquest of Poland, large parts of Scandinavia and much of the Soviet Union, there had been a tremendous number of Jews who fell under Nazi control. At the same time, Himmler had begun his project to depopulate large areas of Poland of Poles and Jews, and repopulate them with ethnic Germans. The Jews had to be moved somewhere.

    Second, the war had truly become a world war with the attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent declaration of war by Germany on the United States in December 1941. Hitler had threatened more than once that if the war became global, the Jews would pay the price. Although mass shootings had begun by the Einsatzgruppen in July 1941, it would appear that an ultimate decision to kill all the Jews was made by Hitler around this time.

    Third, the Einsatzgruppen shootings took a heavy toll on the executioners, who were repelled by the fact that they had to murder unarmed men, women and children, and complained about it. There were also concerns about the openness of the process and the risk of loss of secrecy. These complaints reached Himmler's ears, who decided that a more efficient, secure and «humane» way had to be found to kill Jews. In the strange world that was the SS, the Jews had to be murdered, but they were not to be mistreated while it was taking place. It must however be noted that «humane» referred more to the effect on the murderers than the victims who were being murdered. It was felt that a less «violent» method of killing the Jews would accomplish both purposes.

    Fourth, experiments with mobile gassing vans that had begun in late 1941, as well as their use in the so-called T4 «euthanasia» killings of the mentally insane, revealed that they could quite easily be adapted to kill Jews. The victims were loaded into the back of the van and driven to a burial spot. The van was rigged so that its engine exhaust was pumped back into the back of the van, effectively killing the passengers with carbon monoxide gas. As we shall see, variations on this method were used at all three Operation Reinhard camps. 

Operation's name

    It is hypothesized that the operation was named after Reinhard Heydrich, the coordinator of the Endlösung der Judenfrage (Final Solution of the Jewish Question)  — the extermination of the Jews living in the European countries occupied by the German Third Reich during World War II. After the plans for the Final Solution were laid down at the Wannsee conference, Heydrich was assassinated by SOE agents on May 27, 1942; he died of his injuries eight days later.

     This has been disputed by some researchers who argue that, since the more mainstream designation of the operation was «Aktion Reinhardt» (with «t» after «d»); it could not have been named after Reinhard Heydrich. They argue that it was named after German State Secretary of Finance Fritz Reinhardt. However, official documents using Reinhard Heydrich's name were also written as «Reinhardt».

      
Organization of Operation Reinhard and establishment of the camps

    Following the Wannsee Conference (January 1942), which had as its purpose the coordination of the planned measures for the Final Solution with the central agencies responsible for its implementation, organizational work began. It should be noted that representatives of the Generalgouvernement attended the Wannsee Conference and it is in the Generalgouvernement that Operation Reinhard took place.

    

     To direct Operation Reinhard, Heinrich Himmler appointed SS-Brigadeführer (Major-General) Odilo Globocnik, the SS- und Polizeiführer (SS and Police Leader) for Lublin to take the lead. Globocnik drew on personnel who had been involved in the T4 euthanasia killings, as well as other SS staff, to carry out the detailed organization. Chief among these were Sturmbannführer (Major) Hermann Höfle, who was in charge of administration and Sturmbannführer Christian Wirth, who was in charge of the construction of the camps and was later their inspector.  

    That Hitler was well aware of this is demonstrated by the fact that Globocnik was received by Himmler at the Reich Chancellery in 1942, likely in October. Himmler never received subordinates at the Reich Chancellery, but rather at his own headquarters in the Prinz Albrechtstrasse. Himmler's notes for a discussion with Hitler on October 7, 1942, read: «Conditions Gen. Gouv. Globus» (Conditions Generalgouvernement Globus). «Globus» was Globocnik's nickname. And it is around this time that Globocnik visited the Reich Chancellery. It is most likely that he briefed Himmler, who then went down the hall to brief Hitler.

     In this context, it is noteworthy that almost the entire personnel of the Operation Reinhard camps were drawn from the T4 organization. T4 had been established by personal order of Hitler in 1939 — the order was written on his personal letterhead in October and backdated to September 1 — and was the responsibility of Hauptamt II of the Führer Chancellery, headed by Viktor Brack. It is estimated that at least 120,000 people were gassed to death in this operation.11 Mail and other materials passed weekly from the T4 center in Berlin to Globocnik's headquarters in Lublin. This is no coincidence.

    The camps were built in late 1941 and early 1942 and went into operation in the spring. The three camps were:

    

• Belzec, located on the southeastern border of the Lublin district. Construction began in the late autumn of 1941 and mass exterminations began in the camp in March 1942. Its first commandant was Christian Wirth.

 

• Sobibor, located on the eastern border of the Lublin district. Construction began in March 1942 and mass exterminations began in May. Its first commandant was Obersturmführer (First Lieutenant) Franz Stangl.

 

• Treblinka, located northeast of Warsaw. Construction began in late May 1942 and mass exterminations began in late July. Its first commandant was Irmfried Eberl, who was removed after only a few weeks and replaced by Stangl.

    All of the camps were chosen because they were in sparsely populated areas, which made their concealment easier, and for their proximity to railroad lines, which allowed the Nazis to transport Jews to them with a minimum of disruption. At the same time, they were well positioned to receive their victims. Belzec was ideally positioned to receive deportations from southwestern and southeastern Poland. Sobibor most accessible to deportations from central Poland. The northern part of Poland was most convenient for Treblinka, which lay less than 80 miles to the northeast of the large Jewish population of Warsaw.

    But concealment of the mass killing was not always entirely successful, as this Wehrmacht War Diary entry shows: «Supreme Command Ostrow informs that the Jews in Treblinka are not adequately buried and that, as a result, an unbearable body stench befouls the air». 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Operation of the Camps

Deadly Efficiency

    The three camps were set up roughly at the same time in early 1942. As opposed to concentration camps, or hybrid camps such as Auschwitz, the Operation Reinhard camps were pure extermination camps. They existed for no other purpose than to kill Jews. There was no forced labour, and no work for inmates, other than that directly associated with the killing process, such as processing arrivals, removing corpses from the gas chambers, disposing of corpses and other such ghastly work. In this way, the Operation Reinhard camps are virtually unique in the Holocaust experience. As Erich Bauer, the so-called Gasmeister (gas master) of Sobibor put it:

    I estimate that the number of Jews gassed at Sobibor was about 350,000. In the canteen at Sobibor I once overheard Frenzel, Stangl and Wagner. They were discussing the number of victims in the extermination camps of Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor and expressed their regret that Sobibor 'came last' in the competition.

    At the height of its activities in July 1942, Treblinka was receiving 5000 Jews a day. The absolute efficiency of the camps as industries of death is demonstrated by the fact that, as opposed to other camps, there are very few survivors. For example, it is believed that of the people at Belzec for more than just a few hours, only one or two survived the war, while at least 600,000 were murdered.

     The Killing Process

    Although there were some differences between the three camps, the killing process was similar in all three. It was ruthlessly efficient and has been described as a conveyor belt by an SS doctor. Each person in the process had a precise role to play and in a particular sequence. The twin goal was to conceal the reality of what was happening from the Jews as long as possible and to kill them as quickly and effortlessly as possible. The two processes of concealment and «conveyor belt» took place simultaneously. For this to occur seamlessly, a several-stage exact process covered the time from arrival of a «transport» (as they were called) to the actual killing of the Jews. This process resulted in most Jews being killed within two hours of their arrival at the camp.

    In fact, the killing process really began before the Jews arrived. As soon as the camp was notified that a transport was about to arrive, the various participants were deployed to their positions. Since the three Operation Reinhard camps were too small to accommodate large trains, a few cars at a time would be backed up to a ramp in the camp and the occupants unloaded. The participants in the killing process included SS, Ukrainian auxiliaries, Jewish prisoners, and the victims. Only the SS and Ukrainians participated for the most part willingly.

    The unloading of the victims was the first stage in the process. Jews arriving at the Operation Reinhard camps had usually been sealed in cattle cars for several hours and deprived of food and drink. Many died during transit. Those who survived the trip were almost always in a greatly incapacitated condition - starving, hungry, and sick. They were in no condition to resist their fate, even the very few who might have guessed it, but the SS left nothing to chance. As soon as the door of the trains opened, the arrivals were swarmed by SS and auxiliaries armed with submachine guns and whips. Attack dogs were also employed to instill fear. In Belzec, an orchestra played music as the arrivals disembarked. The show of overwhelming force, the music, and the incapacitated state of the victims combined to disorient and confuse them, and render them more likely to believe and do what they were told. Often at this point, an SS man spoke to them, saying that they had arrived at a transit camp, that they would soon be put to work, but that they first had to be deloused or disinfected. If they did exactly what they were told, they would soon have a bath and a hot meal, receive new clothes and then be assigned to work details. This camouflage, which only had to work for a few short minutes, was usually very effective.

    The second part of the process was the transfer of the Jews from the arrival ramp to the gas chambers. This involved determining which Jews would be gassed and which shot, separating them by gender, having them undress and herding them into the gas chamber. Determining which Jews were to be gassed was quite easy, and quickly done and did not involve a large-scale selection process, as was the case at Auschwitz. In the Operation Reinhard camps, virtually all of the arrivals were gassed shortly after arrival. The only exceptions were some who were too weakened, young, aged, or infirm to walk to the gas chamber; these individuals were taken off to another area, and shot. Their bodies were then dumped into pits and later burned.

    With the exception of a very few strong individuals who were selected for labor (usually they would serve as Sonderkommando), all the rest were destined for the gas chambers. They first were sent to separate barracks where they undressed. They were given the impression that they had to remember where their clothing was, or to mark it, since they would need it later. SS officers explained to them that they were being processed for work, either in Germany, in the east, or in one case, in a future Jewish state in the Ukraine. The women also had their hair shorn.

    Then they were forced to run through the Schlauch (tube), which connected the reception areas of the camps (unloading ramp, undressing hut, hair shearing hut, etc.) and the extermination section. The «tube» at Treblinka is described thus:

Transport Square in the Lower Camp was connected to the extermination area by the «tube», or, as the Germans called it derisively, «the road to heaven» (Himmlelstrasse). The «tube» was nearly 100 meters long and 4.5 to 5 meters wide. It began near the women's undressing barrack, continued east and then south to the extermination area. It was fenced on both sides with barbed wire 2 meters high and intertwined with tree branches so that it was impossible to see in or out. The «tube» crossed a thin grove of trees, which continued eastward up to the camp fence. At the entrance to the «tube», near the women's undressing hut, a sign said: «To the Showers».