Operation Reinhard

Operation Reinhard
Jews from the Siedlce Ghetto forced onto a train to Treblinka.[1]
LocationGeneral Government in German-occupied Poland
DateMarch 1942 – November 1943[2]
Incident typeMass deportations to extermination camps
PerpetratorsOdilo Globočnik, Hermann Höfle, Richard Thomalla, Erwin Lambert, Christian Wirth, Heinrich Himmler, Franz Stangl and others.
OrganizationsSS, Order Police battalions, Sicherheitsdienst, Trawnikis
CampBelzec
Sobibor
Treblinka

Additional:

Chełmno
Majdanek
Auschwitz II
GhettoEuropean and Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland including Białystok, Częstochowa, Kraków, Lublin, Łódź, Warsaw and others
VictimsAround 2 million Jews
Cumulative murders at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka from January 1942 to February 1943

Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt (German: Aktion Reinhard or Aktion Reinhardt; also Einsatz Reinhard or Einsatz Reinhardt) was the codename of the secret German plan in World War II to exterminate Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied Poland. This deadliest phase of the Holocaust was marked by the introduction of extermination camps.[3] The operation proceeded from March 1942 to November 1943; about 1.47 million or more Jews were murdered in just 100 days from late July to early November 1942, a rate which is approximately 83% higher than the commonly suggested figure for the kill rate in the Rwandan genocide.[2] In the time frame of July to October 1942, the overall death toll, including all killings of Jews and not just Operation Reinhard, amounted to two million killed in those four months alone.[4] It was the single fastest rate of genocidal killing in history.[5]

During the operation, as many as two million Jews were sent to Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka to be murdered in purpose-built gas chambers.[3][6] In addition, facilities for mass-murder using Zyklon B were developed at about the same time at the Majdanek concentration camp[3] and at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, near the earlier-established Auschwitz I camp.[7]

  1. ^ IPN (1942). "From archives of the Jewish deportations to extermination camps" (PDF). Karty. Institute of National Remembrance, Warsaw: 32. Document size 4.7 MB. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
  2. ^ a b Stone, Lewi (2019). "Quantifying the Holocaust: Hyperintense kill rates during the Nazi genocide". Science Advances. 5 (1): eaau7292. Bibcode:2019SciA....5.7292S. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aau7292. PMC 6314819. PMID 30613773.
  3. ^ a b c Yad Vashem (2013). "Aktion Reinhard" (PDF). Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies. Document size 33.1 KB. Retrieved 31 October 2013.
  4. ^ Gerlach, Christian (2016). The Extermination of the European Jews. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. p. 100. ISBN 978-0521706896.
  5. ^ Stone, Dan (2023). The Holocaust: An Unfinished History (1st ed.). Pelican Books. p. 191. ISBN 978-0-241-38871-6.
  6. ^ "Operation Reinhardt (Einsatz Reinhard)". USHMM. Retrieved 15 March 2017.
  7. ^ Grossman, Vasily (1946). "The Treblinka Hell" (PDF). The Years of War (1941–1945) (PDF). Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. pp. 371–408. Document size 2.14 MB. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2014-10-06 – via Internet Archive.
    ——. "The Hell of Treblinka". The Road: Stories, Journalism, and Essays. V. Grossman, R. Chandler, E. Chandler, O. Mukovnikova (trans.). Retrieved 1 August 2015.[permanent dead link‍]
    —— (19 September 2002) [1958]. Треблинский ад [Treblinka Hell] (in Russian). Воениздат.