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<h2>Background</h2> <p><em><img class="image-embed embedded-narrative" src="/narrative/2575/thumb" alt="Henoch Kornfeld" data-narrative-stem-id="2575" data-narrative-slug="henoch-kornfeld" data-narrative-type-name="id-card" data-narrative-type-id="39" data-narrative-langcode="en" data-narrative-width="half" />Operation Reinhard </em>(<em>Einsatz Reinhard</em>) became the code name for the German plan to murder the approximately two million Jews residing in the so-called Generalgouvernement (Government General). The Generalgouvernement was the part of German-occupied Poland not directly annexed to Germany, attached to German East Prussia, or incorporated into the German-occupied Soviet Union.</p> <p>Though initiated in the autumn of 1941, the operation was later named after SS General <a href="/narrative/10812/en">Reinhard Heydrich</a>, chief of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), who died in June 1942 from injuries sustained during an assassination attempt by Czech partisans. The RSHA was the agency responsible for coordinating the deportation of European Jews to killing centers in German-occupied Poland. In January 1939, December 1940, and July 1941, Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering had tasked Heydrich personally with drafting plans for a solution of the "Jewish question."</p> <h2>Administration of the Operation</h2> <p>SS General Odilo Globocnik, SS and police leader in the Lublin District of the Generalgouvernement, directed Operation Reinhard between autumn 1941 and late summer 1943. He established two departments on his staff for this purpose. The first was a deportation coordination team under SS Major Hermann Hoefle, who was responsible for arranging personnel and transport for the planned deportations. Hoefle also coordinated deportation operations, which were usually placed under the command of the regional SS and police commander, with regional SS and police and civilian occupation authorities.</p> <p>The second department was the Inspectorate of SS Special Detachments under Criminal Police captain Christian Wirth, who was responsible for the construction and management of the three Operation Reinhard killing centers (Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka II). The Operation Reinhard killing centers were managed by small detachments of German SS and Police and guarded by detachments of police auxiliaries trained at the <a href="/narrative/10797/en">Trawniki</a> training camp.</p> <h2>Goals of Operation Reinhard</h2> <p>As Globocnik listed them in January 1944, the aims of Operation Reinhard were:</p> <ul> <li>to “resettle” (i.e., to kill) the Polish Jews</li> <li>to exploit the skilled or manual labor of some Polish Jews before killing them</li> <li>to secure the personal property of the Jews (clothing, currency, jewelry, and other possessions)</li> <li>to identify and secure alleged hidden and immovable assets such as factories, apartments, and land.</li> </ul> <h2>Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka II</h2> <p><a class="other-embed embedded-narrative" href="/content/en/gallery/operation-reinhard-maps" data-narrative-stem-id="19845" data-narrative-type-id="38" data-narrative-type-name="gallery" data-narrative-slug="operation-reinhard-maps" data-narrative-langcode="en" data-narrative-width="half"> Operation Reinhard: Maps </a> Construction of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka II began in autumn 1941. Wirth, who had played a significant role in the murder of institutionalized persons with disabilities in Germany between 1939 and 1941, applied his experience of killing with carbon monoxide exhaust fumes to the construction of the Operation Reinhard killing centers. In all three camps, Trawniki-trained guards, supervised by Operation Reinhard staff, murdered their victims by using carbon monoxide gas generated by stationary engines and pumped into gas chambers. After a few test gassings using Polish prisoners and Soviet prisoners of war, killing operations at Belzec began in March 1942. They continued until December 1942. Sobibor began operating in May 1942 and remained functional until October 1943. Treblinka II opened in July 1942 and was closed in August 1943.</p> <p>German staff and their auxiliaries (most of them trained at the Trawniki training camp) murdered at least 434,508 Jews and an undetermined number of Poles, Roma (Gypsies), and Soviet prisoners of war in Belzec; at least 170,000 Jews and an undetermined number of Poles, Roma, and Soviet prisoners of war in Sobibor; and approximately 925,000 Jews and an unknown number of Poles, Roma, and Soviet prisoners of war in Treblinka II.</p> <p>Property belonging to the victims of the Operation Reinhard camps was stored in depots in Lublin city, at the Lublin-Majdanek concentration camp, and at the forced-labor camps Trawniki and Poniatowa.</p> <h2>Deportations to Operation Reinhard Killing Centers</h2> <p><img class="image-embed embedded-narrative" src="/narrative/19863/thumb" alt="Deportation from the Siedlce ghetto" data-narrative-stem-id="19863" data-narrative-slug="deportation-from-the-siedlce-ghetto" data-narrative-type-name="photo" data-narrative-type-id="43" data-narrative-langcode="en" data-narrative-width="half" />The overwhelming majority of victims in the Operation Reinhard killing centers were Jews deported from <a href="/narrative/286/en">ghettos</a> in Poland. Once the killing centers were operational, German SS and police forces liquidated the ghettos and deported Jews by rail to those killing centers.</p> <p>The victims of <strong>Belzec </strong>were mainly Jews from the ghettos of southern Poland, and included German, Austrian, and Czech Jews held in the Piaski and Izbica transit ghettos in Lublin District.</p> <p>Jews deported to <strong>Sobibor </strong>came mainly from the Lublin area and other ghettos of the eastern Generalgouvernement; this killing center also received transports from France and the Netherlands.</p> <p>Deportations to <strong>Treblinka </strong>originated mainly from central Poland, primarily from the Warsaw ghetto, but also from the Districts Radom and Krakow in the Generalgouvernement, from District Bialystok, as well as from Bulgarian-occupied Thrace and Macedonia.</p> <h2>Other Operation Reinhard Camps</h2> <p>Also part of Operation Reinhard were several forced-labor camps for Jews in District Lublin, including Poniatowa, the <a href="/narrative/10797/en">Trawniki</a> forced-labor camp, Budzyn, Krasnik, and the Lublin/Majdanek camp before its formal conversion into a concentration camp in February 1943. For a time, Majdanek also served as a killing site for Jews whom the SS could no longer kill at Belzec in the late autumn of 1942.</p> <h2>Conclusion of Operation Reinhard</h2> <p>In November 1943, after the Sobibor uprising, SS and police units shot the Jewish labor forces still incarcerated at Trawniki, Poniatowa, and Majdanek, 42,000 in all, within the framework of <a href="/narrative/4546/en">Operation “Harvest Festival.” </a>With the completion of “Harvest Festival,” Operation Reinhard came to a conclusion, with Globocnik submitting a final report to Himmler in January 1944.</p> <p>In all, the SS and police killed approximately 1.7 million Jews as part of Operation Reinhard. The victims of the Operation Reinhard camps also included an unknown number of <a href="/narrative/6590/en">Poles</a>, <a href="/narrative/4500/en">Roma</a> (Gypsies), and <a href="/narrative/10135/en">Soviet prisoners of war</a>.</p>

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<p>View after the obliteration of the <a href="/narrative/3769/en">Belzec</a> killing center showing a railway shed where victims' belongings were stored. Belzec, Poland, 1944.</p>
Article Operation Reinhard (Einsatz Reinhard)
<p>Blimcia's parents were religious Jews. Her father, Shaya David, and her mother, Malcia Saleschtz, had settled in Kolbuszowa, where Blimcia's mother had been raised. There, Malcia's father bought the newlyweds a home and started his new son-in-law in the wholesale flour business.</p> <p>1933-39: Blimcia was born in 1938, and was raised among many aunts, uncles and cousins. Around Blimcia's first birthday, Germany <a href="/narrative/2103/en">invaded Poland</a> and soon reached Kolbuszowa. Polish soldiers on horses tried to fight against the German army, but they were no match for tanks. After a short battle, there were many dead horses in the streets. Blimcia's town came under German rule.</p> <p>1940-42: The <a href="/narrative/2562/en">children</a> in town feared Hafenbier, the vicious German police commander who was posted in Kolbuszowa. Hafenbier terrorized and killed many of the town's Jews. Blimcia often played a game in which her 3-year-old cousin <a href="/narrative/2575/en">Henoch</a> would portray Hafenbier, asking her and their friends, "Are you a Jew?" "Yes," they would answer. "If you are a Jew," mimicked Henoch, "you are dead." With his rifle fashioned from wood, Henoch would "shoot" Blimcia and the others. They would fall over, pretending they had been killed.</p> <p>Blimcia and her family were deported to the Rzeszow ghetto on June 25, 1942, and then to the <a href="/narrative/3769/en">Belzec</a> killing center on July 7 where they were gassed. Blimcia was 3 and a half years old.</p>
ID Card Blimcia Lische
<p>A group of Romani (Gypsy) prisoners in Belzec labor camp, 1940. </p> <p>The Belzec labor camp and its subsidiaries were dismantled at the end of 1940.</p>
Photo Romani (Gypsy) prisoners in Belzec
<p>View after the obliteration of the <a href="/narrative/3769/en">Belzec</a> killing center showing a railway shed where victims' belongings were stored. Belzec, Poland, 1944.</p>
Photo Site of the Belzec killing center
<p>Jews are forced into boxcars for deportation to the <a href="/narrative/3769/en">Belzec</a> killing center. Lublin, Poland, 1942.</p>
Media Gallery Killing Centers
<p>In 1939, as Chaim's tour in the Polish army was nearing its scheduled end, Germany invaded Poland. The Germans captured Chaim and sent him to Germany for forced labor. As a Jewish prisoner of war, Chaim later was returned to Poland. Ultimately, he was deported to the Sobibor camp, where the rest of his family died. In the 1943 Sobibor uprising, Chaim killed a guard. He escaped with his girlfriend, Selma, whom he later married. A farmer hid them until liberation in June 1944.</p>
Oral History Chaim Engel describes sorting the clothing of Belzec prisoners killed in Sobibor
<p>Wilek was the son of Jewish parents living in the southeastern Polish town of Lvov. His family owned and operated a winery that had been in family hands since 1870. Wilek's father died of a heart attack in 1929. Wilek entered secondary school in 1939. Soon after he began school, World War II began with the German invasion of Poland. Lvov was in the part of eastern Poland annexed by the Soviet Union. Although the Soviets took over Wilek's home and the family business, Wilek was able to continue his schooling. On June 22, 1941, German forces invaded the Soviet Union. The Germans occupied Lvov and established a ghetto there. Wilek was among a small group of Jews who left the ghetto daily to work, making roofing paper for the German army. In 1943, shortly before the Germans destroyed the Lvov ghetto, Wilek obtained false papers, assumed the name of a Christian coworker, and fled to Hungary. He became a courier for the resistance in Budapest and was eventually arrested by the Germans as a Polish spy. He was sent to the Auschwitz camp in October 1944. Wilek was among thousands of prisoners sent on a death march to the German interior as Allied forces advanced. He was liberated by US forces in April 1945, and immigrated to the United States in 1949.</p>
Oral History Wilek (William) Loew describes the roundup of Jews during August 1942 deportation from Lvov to Belzec
Map Killing centers, Belzec indicated
Map Major deportations to Belzec, 1942
Map Belzec camp plan, winter 1942
Map Belzec environs, winter 1942
Map Europe 1943-1944, Belzec indicated
<p>Jews are forced into boxcars for deportation to the <a href="/narrative/3769/en">Belzec</a> killing center. Lublin, Poland, 1942.</p>
Article Belzec: Key Dates
<p>Jews are forced into boxcars for deportation to the <a href="/narrative/3769/en">Belzec</a> killing center. Lublin, Poland, 1942.</p>
Article Belzec
<p>A column of prisoners arrives at the Belzec killing center. Belzec, Poland, ca. 1942.</p> <p>In early 1940 the Germans set up a forced-labor camp for Jewish prisoners in Belzec. The inmates were forced to build fortifications and dig anti-tank ditches along the demarcation line between Germany and Soviet-occupied Poland. The camp was closed down at the end of 1940. The following year, in November 1941, construction began on the Belzec <a href="/narrative/2746/en">killing center</a>.</p>
Photo Prisoners arriving at the Belzec killing center
<p>Kaethe was the fifth of nine children born to Jewish parents. After graduating from secondary school, Kaethe worked with her father in his bakery. In 1918 she married <a href="/narrative/8583/en">Samson Reichstein</a>, and the couple settled in Hanover, where Samson was based as a salesman. Their son Herbert was born in 1920. As his wife, Kaethe was officially required to take on her husband's citizenship.</p> <p>1933-39: In 1938 Kaethe and her husband succeeded in obtaining an exit visa for the United States for their 18-year-old son Herbert as part of the U.S. immigration quota for Poland. Herbert sailed to America in October. Later that same year, Kaethe and Samson were expelled "home" to Poland with 1,000 other Polish Jews from Hanover. The Reichsteins made their way to Samson's hometown of Tarnopol.</p> <p>1940-44: Three months after the Germans overran the Soviets in Tarnopol in June 1941, the Germans established a ghetto. At 4:30 a.m. on August 31, 1942, Kaethe and Samson were awakened by screaming outside. People in the ghetto were being rounded up and herded into a public square. Samson pleaded with Kaethe to run with him to hide in a bunker, but she refused, more terrified of what would happen if she hid and were discovered. She decided to remain alone in the house. Ten minutes later, she was rounded up.</p> <p>Kaethe Reichstein was deported to the <a href="/narrative/3769/en">Belzec</a> killing center in Poland. She perished there in September 1942.</p>
ID Card Kathe Ert Reichstein
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