page_title: Odilo Globočnik
section_title: Extermination camps
hierarchical_section_title: Odilo Globočnik / Nazi Party and SS career / Extermination camps
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: NS-Tötungsanstalt Hartheim, Abholungsbus mit Fahrer, Foto Niedernhart Prozess. "Deutsche Reichspost. 40 km(/h). (Mercedes-Stern) Diesel. RP-100 855." dunkel matt lackiert, Linkslenker, Startkurbel-Loch, Dachgalerie für Gepäck, Winker und Blinker. Fensterscheiben Passagierraum und Zielanzeige dunkel lackiert, Original-Scheinwerfer abgedeckt, Luftschutzscheinwerfer, weisse Lackierung Stoßstange, Kotblechkontur, Eck-Visierantennen, ohne Aussenspiegel; am Dach: Basis für Anhänger-Dreieck; Hufeisen als Glückssymbol English: Hartheim Nazi killing center, bus with driver
context_page_description: Odilo Globočnik was an Austrian war criminal. He was an official of the Nazi Party and later a high-ranking leader of the Schutzstaffel. As an associate of Adolf Eichmann, he had a leading role in Operation Reinhard, which organized the murder of more than one million mostly Polish Jews during the Holocaust in the Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibór and Bełżec extermination camps. Historian Michael Allen described him as "the vilest individual in the vilest organization ever known".
  Because Globočnik was a leading Nazi official, and perpetrator of not only the Holocaust but the enslavement and ethnic cleansing of millions of Poles and other Slavs, historians have been interested in accounts of Globočnik's Slavic ancestry. In his 2004 biography of Globočnik, historian Joseph Kranjc devoted the entire first chapter to the debate concerning his ancestry. He says that Globočnik was ridiculed by other Nazis for his surname, because Hitler classified Slavs as sub-human. But senior Nazis such as Himmler defended him, saying that he was of Aryan origin and that his surname had been derived from slavicization.
context_section_description: There are indications that Globočnik, along with a chief accomplice Christian Wirth, may have originated the concept of the extermination camp and industrialised murder, and been the person to suggest it to Himmler. At a two-hour meeting with Himmler on 13 October 1941, Globočnik received verbal approval to start construction work on the Belzec extermination camp, the first such camp in the General Government. Shortly beforehand, in September 1941, Globočnik had been visited by Phillip Bouhl er and Victor Brack, the top officials in the Fuhrer Chancellery responsible for the Action T4 "euthanasia" program, which had been using gas chambers disguised as shower rooms to execute many of its victims.  On or about 1 October 1941, Globočnik had written a memorandum to Himmler containing proposals for actions against the Jews "of a security policy nature," and the 13 October meeting was held to discuss this memorandum and related subjects.  
  A colleague's contemporaneous letter reflects Globočnik's state of mind at the time of the 13 October meeting: Globočnik said it was necessary to undertake a "cleansing of the entire [General Government] of Jews and Poles" and was "full of good and far-reaching plans" to accomplish this.  There are indications that Globočnik may have begun a crude experimental gassing facility in the woods near Belzec shortly before his mid-October meeting with Himmler. At the 13 October 1941 meeting with Himmler, Globočnikproposed exterminating the Jews in assembly-line fashion in a concentration camp, using gas chambers.  On 14 October 1941 – the day after he had met with Globočnik – Himmler held a five-hour meeting with Reinhard Heydrich to discuss "executions", following which other extermination camp gassing sites were built.  Days later, Himmler forbade all further Jewish emigration from Reich territory "in view of the forthcoming 'Final Solution' to the Jewish question."
  The gassing facilities that Globočnik established at Belzec soon after his 13 October meeting with Himmler were designed by T4 programme personnel assigned to him. They used carbon monoxide, as the T4 programme had done.  Before it became an extermination camp, Belzec had been part of Himmler's and Globočnik's Burggraben project. The construction of three more death camps, Sobibor and Maidanek in the Lublin district and Treblinka at Małkinia Górna, followed in 1942. Globočnik was complicit in the extermination of more than 1.5 million Polish, Czech, Dutch, French, Russian, Slovak, German, Portuguese, Turkish, Spanish and Austrian Jews, as well as a smaller number of non-Jews, in the death camps which he organised and supervised.
  He exploited Jews and non-Jews as slave labourers in his own forced labour camps. He was responsible for seizing the properties and valuables of murdered inmates while in charge of Operation Reinhard. Although other arms of the Nazi state were also involved in the overall management of the greater concentration camp system, Globočnik had control over the Aktion Reinhard camps, and any orders that he received came directly from Himmler.  From 1942–1943 he also oversaw the beginning of the Generalplan Ost, the plan to expel Poles from their lands and resettle those territories with German settlers (see Zamość Uprising). On 9 November 1942, Globočnik was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer and Generalleutnant der Polizei.
caption: Action T4 bus for the transport to Hartheim Euthanasia Centre
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