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March 1942 - October 1943Primary source · 2 sourcesWell documented

Operation Reinhard builds three camps that exist only to kill

Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka have no factories and no forced-labor purpose, only gas chambers, and murder 1.7 million Jews in eighteen months

On the timeline · around March 1942 - October 1943 · The Tide TurnsAxis AscendantThe Tide TurnsOperation Reinhard builds three camps that exist only to kill1942

Quick facts

Camps
Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka
First killings
Belzec, 17 March 1942
Director
Christian Wirth, formerly of the T4 euthanasia program
Killing method
Carbon monoxide from captured engines
Total murdered
Approximately 1.7 million Jews
Treblinka death toll alone
Estimated 925,000

What happened

Operation Reinhard, the German code name for the plan to murder every Jew in the General Government region of occupied Poland, began killing operations at Belzec on 17 March 1942, when the first Jewish communities were deported there. Sobibor followed in May 1942 and Treblinka in July 1942. Unlike Auschwitz, which combined mass murder with a large forced-labor and industrial complex, all three Operation Reinhard camps were built for one purpose only: killing centers with no factories, no significant labor camp attached, and almost no infrastructure beyond what was needed to move people from the trains to the gas chambers and dispose of the bodies. Camps used carbon monoxide generated by captured Soviet tank or truck engines rather than the industrially produced Zyklon B used at Auschwitz. Christian Wirth, the police captain who had overseen the T4 euthanasia gassing program in Germany, directed construction and operations at all three camps, applying methods and in some cases personnel from that earlier program. Operation Reinhard's killing centers and associated mass shootings murdered approximately 1.7 million Jews before the last of the three camps, Treblinka, was dismantled in the fall of 1943.

Why it matters

The distinction between Auschwitz and the Operation Reinhard camps matters for understanding the scale and speed of the Holocaust: Reinhard's camps processed and murdered nearly the entire Jewish population of occupied Poland, one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe, in about eighteen months, using a design built for nothing but throughput. Treblinka alone murdered an estimated 925,000 people.

How we know

Postwar trial testimony from surviving camp personnel and the small number of Jewish prisoners who escaped or survived, along with German administrative records recovered after the war, allow historians to date each camp's opening and closing and estimate victim totals with reasonable precision, despite the Germans' systematic effort to destroy the camps and erase evidence as each was closed.

Sources

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Operation Reinhard builds three camps that exist only to kill · World War II · SourcedStory