Operation Reinhard Research Paper

In the early 1930s, the residents of the picturesque city of Dachau, Germany, were completely unaware of the horrific events about to unfold that would overshadow their city still today. The citizens of Dachau were oblivious that their city was going to become the origin of concentration camps and of the Holocaust, the mass murder committed by the Nazi s in World War II. Dachau Concentration Camp, which would soon be placed on the edge of their community, would serve as a model for all Nazi extermination camps. This perfect prototype of a Nazi killing machine has come to represent the start of the horror-filled Holocaust and the Nazi's determination to achieve a perfect society during World War II.

The Sobibor camp was divided into three parts. An administrator area, a reception area, and a killing area. The administration also had camp offices,housing for the German and trawniki trained guards. The killing area included gas chamber. It also had mass graves and barracks for prisoners. Jews were put in a gas chamber and then would be killed.

The extermination and slave labor camp known as Belzec was indeed a nightmare to those who were held within its walls. Not only were the living conditions of the camp unbearable, but it was also very deadly. By closely examining Belzec, one gains an understanding of the horrors that occurred during the Holocaust. Many Jewish people died in Belzec, and the living conditions that they were forced to endure were intolerable and inhumane. Many innocent people suffered under the ruthless and cruel conditions in the extermination camp Belzec. Originally a slave labor camp, Belzec was located in South East Poland. It was said that the camp was responsible for the killing and murdering of 600,000 people. Some were Roma, but the majority of deaths

At the “Wannsee Conference”, which took place in Berlin, on January 20, 1942 the German regime with its main protagonists Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler planned the ‘final solution of the Jewish question. Even if massacres of about one million Jews occurred before the plans of the Final Solution, with the decision to eradicate the entire Jewish population, extermination camps were built and industrialized mass slaughter of Jews began in earnest. The scene where a train of Schindler’s workers was wrongly sent to Auschwitz shows such an extermination camp were the Nazis systematically gassed thousands of Jews. Another example for the organized genocide is the mass cremation after the mass execution during the eviction of the ghetto in Krakow.

Autumn of 1941, Heinrich told German General Odilo Globocnik to proceed with the plan to murder all of the Jews in the General government. The plan’s name was Operation Reinhard and it was named after Heydrich. A big part of the plan was the killing centers. The names of the killing centers are Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. Their main purpose was the killing of

Even with such massive extermination the German leaders were unsatisfied and demanded a more efficient and permanent answer to the problem. The directive to exterminate all the Jews in Europe was issued on July 31, 1941. In December of that year, a law banning Jews from leaving any German territories was put into effect. Then finally, on January 20, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich came up with what was termed "the final solution to the of the Jewish question." He proposed a plan to erect six camps built for killing large numbers of people. The Germans built six such camps in the two years to follow, Belzec, Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz, and Chelmno. Chelmno was the first of the camps to be built. It used large trucks into which they crammed as many Jews as possible who choked on the trucks own exhaust fumes. Most of the other camps had permanent gas chambers, which killed by the fumes of a stationary engine. Although Auschwitz used Zyklon B, a type of hydrogen cyanide. These venues of death were host to over 3 million Jews who lost their lives. (Wyman)

He was then selected as the Commissioner for the Establishment of the Bases for SS and Police in the Occupied Eastern Territories. Lastly this man was assigned to arrange the mass murder of Jews confide to the Generalgouvernement. (Belzec: Chronology) In November of 1941 the job of being first camp commander was given to a former police officer, named SS Colonel General Christian Wirth. He was also responsible for helping introducing the T4 “euthanasia program.” In the time spent at the camp he controlled the 20-30 SS men with the addition of 90-120 Ukrainians comprising a guard company. (History & Overview of Belzec Concentration Camp) Known as the most dominant figure he was called by fellow SS men as “Savage Christian,” and “Stuka” by the Ukrainian guards. The deputy commandant in control of Camp two was Gottfried Schwarz companied by Johann Niemann. Although Niemann was transferred to Sobibor where he later died in the revolt of 1943. Schwarz also played a key role in the development of the camp. As a matter of fact he was present for the arrival of Wirth in 1941. Lorenz Hackenholt was put in charge of all gassing engines with the help of two Ukrainians. (Belzec Death Camp) On August 19, 1942 Kurt Gerstein an SS official of the Institute of Hygiene in SS Operations Main office visited Belzec to inspect the efficiency of the carbon monoxide. (Belzec:

Only a few miles from Poland’s second largest cities, Krakow, lies a nearly barren field with only a moderate sized memorial to the thousands of people killed in a brutal act of genocide. Here, between 1941 and 1945, thousands of enemies of the Nazi party, primarily Jews, were worked, starved, died of disease, or were shot. Out of the over 150,000 people sent through Plaszow and its sub-camps, only around 2,000 survived. From its establishment in 1941 to its liquidation in January 1945, thousands of people lost their lives or were sent to their deaths in other camps.

I chose the concentration camp Treblinka, it was established in November of 1941. With the support of the SS and Police Leader for District Warsaw in “Generalgouvernement”, SS and police authorities established a forced-labor camp for Jews (Treblinka). Later on it became Treblinka I. In addition to it being a labor camp, it also served as a “Labor Education Camp” for non-Jewish Poles, who the Germans believed to have violated labor discipline. Jewish and Polish prisoners were put into separate compounds of the camp, and deployed at forced labor. The killing center known as Treblinka II was completed in July of 1942, about a mile from the Treblinka I, and a rail spur was added that led from Treblinka I to Treblinka II. The Treblinka camp

Success of Operation Overlord Although Operation Overlord sounds like a medieval scheme to take over a king, it was actually a well-planned set of phases to defeat the mighty Germans and take control of the German occupied beachheads. Up until Operation Overlord, Germany held the title of being the greatest and strongest nation. Germany had seized France, and the Allies needed a plan to take it back. After weighing all options, US Army general Dwight D. Eisenhower and British general Bernard Montgomery created the beginnings of a master plan, and thus, Operation Overlord was born.

“In 1940, the first year of the Warsaw ghetto, 90 people died of starvation. In 1941 the figure rose to 11,000. When it was at it’s height, starvation killed 500 each week” (Life 191). Twenty percent of the Jewish population of the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos were starved to death between 1941-1942, but little did everyone know at the time 122,000 of those Jews were helping the German war effort (Life 188). Camps weren’t the only ways Nazis had used to kill people they also had been using the Einsatzgruppen which were mobile killing units that they used to gas Jews and these killing units decimated up to 1.3 million

With the acquisition of new territory the number of Jews under Nazi control increased dramatically by the summer’s end of 1941. The Jewish Problem no longer became geographically confined to Reich but rather became a pan-European wide crisis. The policy of territorial relocation of Jews became unfeasible. Additionally, despite the success of the Einsatzgruppen shootings there were simply few too many men to eradicate the growing number of Jews. It was during this critical stage approximated between July and December 1941 that Hitler abandoned previous plans of emigration and mobile killings to that of a complete extermination of Jews from the entire continent of Europe. In order to do so, Jews would be deported to six centrally located extermination camps in occupied Poland; Maidanek, Belzec, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmo, Sobibor, and Treblinka. It is from this moment the train becomes vital in the eradication of European Jewry.

By 1945, Germany had successfully built multiple killing facilities that were used to exterminate Jews and other prisoners of the German army. In the spring and summer of 1945, the second and largest addition to Auschwitz was completed. This addition was titled Birkenau or Auschwitz II, and consisted of four huge crematoria and gas chambers built for the extermination of prisoners. During this time of the war the German military had captured thousands of Jews and other prisoners, this resulted in Germany having to expand their killing facilities in order to accommodate the newly arrived prisoners. In the winter of 1942-1943 the German army experienced a defeat against the Soviets at Stalingrad, this loss resulted in the Germans putting more

It was in Poland, barbed wires ran across the walls and a strong scent of death drifted in the air. Surrounded by railroads, barracks and gas chambers, it was here in Auschwitz were one of the most horrifying events took place. Millions of people suffered and took their last breath here during Hitler’s attempt to concur the world (Bülow, n.d.). Today, I revisit this awful camp, seeking many answers as to why Hitler and his people carried out such event. I am being accompanied by The Angel of Death himself, Mr. Josef Mengele.

The Holocaust was the systematic , bureaucratic , state sponsored persecution and murder of six million jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning “ sacrifice by fire”.The Germans targeted the non-Jewish Polish intelligentsia for killing, and deported millions of Polish and Soviet civilians for forced labor in Germany or in occupied Poland , where these individuals worked and often died under deplorable conditions.German police officials targeted thousands of political opponents including Communists , Socialists , and trade unionists and Jehovah’s witness.Many of these individuals died as a result of incarceration and maltreatment.To concentrate and monitor the Jewish population as well as to facilitate later deportation of the Jews , the Germans and their collaborators created ghettos, transit camps, and forced labors camps for Jews during the war years.The German authorities also established numerous forced labor camps, both in the so called Greater German Reich and in German occupied territory , for non Jews whose labor the Germans sought to exploit.Between 1941 and 1944 , Nazi German authorities deported millions of Jews from Germany, from occupied territories , and from the countries of many of its Axis allies to ghettos and to killing centers, often called extermination camps , where they were murdered in specially developed gassing facilities.In the final months of the war , SS guards moved camp inmates by train or on