"REINHARDT" ACTION OF POLISH JEWS
At night from 16 to 17 March 1942. Germans began deportation of Jews from the ghetto in Lublin to the extermination camp in Bełżec. At the same time, they besides started exporting Lviv Jews there.
This is how Operation "Reinhardt" began, the aim of which was to execution the judaic population from 5 districts of the General Governorate (Warsaw, Radom, Kraków, Lublin and Galician). At the end of 1942, the action was extended to the East Prussia territory of Bialystock.
The decision to execution all European Jews was made in the fall of 1941. In order to coordinate the actions of the various segments of the German Reich's 3rd State Camera on 20 January 1942, a conference was held in Wannsee, Berlin.
The general typical of politician Hans Frank demanded that "the final solution to the judaic issue" begin with occupied Poland.
Himmler appointed Odilo Globocnik, head of SS and police in Lublin as the contractor of this task. There, too, was the staff of the operation, which was given the code name "Reinhardt" in honor of the head of the Reich's Chief safety Office, Reinhard Heydrich, killed by the Czech guerrillas. From this office, Adolf Eichmann supervised the action.
To carry out the criminal plan, Germany directed SS men active in action T4 (murdering people with disabilities).
Her boss, Christian Wirth, supervised the activities created specifically for the "Reinhardt" action of immediate extermination centers, where death was carried out in gas chambers.
The Bełżec camp operated from March to December 1942, the Sobibor camp – from May 1942 to October 1943, and the Treblinka II camp – from July 1942 to August 1943.
They consumed more than 1.5 million lives. Victims of the action "Reinhardt" were besides murdered in the concentration and extermination camp in Majdanek.
As of spring 1942. The Germans systematically liquidated judaic aggregates in the General Governorate (in December 1941 in the extermination camp in Chełmno nad Ner, they began killing Jews from the Warta Country).
This meant not only deporting prisoners of ghettos to extermination camps under inhuman conditions, but besides mass murders and executions on site.
In tiny towns where ghettos were not strictly isolated, this happened in front of the local, Polish population.
German "Reinhardt" action personnel were comparatively few. It consisted of 450 SS men and over 1,000 auxiliary service members recruited from among the Red Army prisoners (mostly Ukrainians, Latvians and Russian Germans).
They were trained in a camp in Trawniki, Lublin and were besides utilized as guards in extermination camps. In the absence of people to assist in deportation actions and participate in raids on refugees, the Germans mobilized local forces, especially grenade police, sometimes firefighters or construction service junacs (Baudienst).
In the larger ghettos, the work for providing human quotas for the expected “evacuee to work to the East” was transferred to the judaic and judaic Councils of the Order Service.
The displacement operations were coordinated by the chief of staff of Operation Reinhardt, Hermann Höfle. The largest took place in the Warsaw Ghetto, from where within 2 months (July 22 to September 21, 1942). The Germans have moved more than 250,000 people to Treblinka.
The economical dimension of Operation Reinhardt was besides crucial for the 3rd German Reich. The Globocnik Staff was subject to more than 150 labour camps for Jews.
A massive income besides brought about a robbery of property belonging to the murdered. According to Globocnik's final report, its value was 179 million brands after deducting 12 million brands of operation costs.
Poiimo opposition from the war manufacture utilizing the slave labour of Jews, the precedence for the SS was to complete the "final solution".
Following the rebellions of prisoners in Treblinka (2 August 1943) and Sobibor (14 October 1943), the successor of Globocnik Jakob Sporrenberg, carried out an action under the code name "Erntefest" ("harvests"). On 3 and 4 November 1943, in camps in Majdanek, Trawniki and Poniatowa Germans shot 42 1000 prisoners.
In total, during Operation Reinhardt in 18 months – from 17 March 1942 to 4 November 1943. – Germans murdered about 2 million Jews.
Most of them died before the end of 1942. There were besides over 100,000 victims. Jews from France, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Macedonia and Thrace, whom the Germans deported to Sobibor, Bełżec and Treblinka.
