Operation Reinhard - Death Factories

Death Factories

On 13 October 1941, SS and Police Leader Odilo Globocnik (headquarters in Lublin) received a verbal order from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler to start immediate construction work on the first Aktion Reinhard camp at Bełżec, in the General Government, Poland (operational March 1942). While the SS-Totenkopfverbände managed the greater concentration camp system, Globocnik was given complete control over the Aktion Reinhard camps. All orders he received came directly from Himmler and not from SS-Gruppenführer Richard Glücks, head of the Nazi Concentration Camp service. Between 20 and 35 SS men under the direct command of Globocnik served in each extermination camp. These men came from the Sicherheitsdienst and SS Police Battalions, and were complemented with SS personnel from Aktion T4. Camp security was provided by Ukrainian collaborators (Trawnikis). These guards were known as Hilfswillige or auxiliaries by the camp's SS command.

By mid 1942, three more death camps had been established at Chełmno (operational Dec 1941), Sobibor (operational May 1942), and Treblinka (operational July 1942). It is important to note that these death factories developed progressively as each site was built. Chełmno, which was under the control of SS-Standartenführer Ernst Damzog, commander of the SD in occupied Posen, was built around a manor house in the Reichsgau Wartheland. It was the Final Solution's pilot project. The camp, which did not have gas chambers, used three gas vans, that had been previously employed by Einsatzgruppen on the Russian Front, to kill Jews from the Łódź Ghetto. Although Chełmno was not under the control of Globocnik, it was used periodically during Aktion Reinhard to murder Jews from the General Government. The camp had no crematoria only mass graves in the woods.

When Globocnik's Bełżec and Sobibor became operational, these camps had diesel-run gas chambers while bodies were burned in pits. Treblinka, the last camp to become operational, utilised the knowledge the Nazis had acquired from the other camps. Within 15 months, this death factory had killed between 800,000 and 1,400,000 people, disposed of their bodies and processed their belongings.

Overall Globocnik's camps had similar designs. Firstly they were situated within wooded areas well away from populations. Secondly they were constructed near branch lines that linked to the Polish rail system. Each camp had a station and reception areas. Beyond these buildings was a narrow, camouflaged path (the so-called Himmelfahrtsstraße or in English: Road to Heaven) that led to the extermination site that contained the undressing barracks, gas chambers, pits and cremation grids. The SS guards and Ukrainian Trawnikis lived in a separate area. Wooden watchtowers and barbed-wire fences, partially camouflaged with pine branches, surrounded these camps.

Unlike the camps such as Dachau or Auschwitz, no electric fences were used, as camp inmate numbers remained relatively low. Only small numbers of Sonderkommando were kept alive to assist arriving transports, for clearing away bodies, or for sorting property and valuables from dead victims. Prisoners who were forced to work in the killing centers were kept in isolation from those who worked outside in the reception and property-sorting areas. Periodically these groups would be killed and replaced to remove any potential witnesses to the mass murder.

During Operation Reinhard, Globocnik oversaw the systematic killing of more than 2,000,000 Jews from Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, the Reich (Germany and Austria), the Netherlands and Soviet Union. An undetermined number of Roma were also killed in these death camps, a large number of whom were children.