page_title: Operation Reinhard
section_title: Death camps
hierarchical_section_title: Operation Reinhard / Death camps
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Odilo Globotschnigg [Globocnik] Gauleiter v. Wien
context_page_description: Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt was the codename of the secretive German plan in World War II to exterminate Jewish Poles 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 put to death in purpose-built gas chambers. In addition, mass-killing facilities, 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.
context_section_description: On 13 October 1941, SS and Police Leader Odilo Globočnik headquartered in Lublin received an oral order from Himmler – anticipating the fall of Moscow – to start immediate construction work on the first killing centre at Bełżec in the General Government territory of occupied Poland. Notably, the order preceded the Wannsee Conference by three months. The new camp was operational beginning 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 highly secretive 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, 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 killing mechanism consisted of a large internal-combustion engine pumping exhaust fumes into rooms through long pipes. Starting 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 killed 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 began operating 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 killing 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. Chełmno did not have crematoria; only the mass graves in the woods. It was a testing ground for the establishment of faster methods of killing 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 w
caption: SS and Police Leader Odilo Globočnik in charge of Operation Reinhard
exif: {}