Operation Reinhard Papers

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Operation Reinhard was one of the most horrific moments in the history of World War II. It was a plan created by the Nazis with the goal of exterminating European Jews. Operation Reinhard can be traced back to the Wannsee Conference held on January 20, 1942, where high-ranking Nazi officials discussed the "Final Solution." It was created to kill Jews, with precise planning and coordination. Operation Reinhard was named after Heydrich Reinhard, who was assassinated in 1942. SS-Obergruppenführer Odilo Globocnik was appointed head of the operation. Operation Reinhard began in the March of 1942, with the creation of three extermination camps: Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, located in occupied Poland. These camps were chosen for their remote locations and …show more content…

The scale of the operation was huge, with hundreds of thousands of Jews killed in a short period of time. While Odilo Globocnik was in charge of Operation Reinhard, he created two departments of staff. The first was a deportation coordination team under SS Major Herman Hofle. The second was the Inspectorate of SS Special Detachments, led by criminal police captain Christian Wirth. SS personnel, aided by Ukrainian soldiers, oversaw the extermination camps, which often had overcrowded gas chambers and mass graves. The victims faced horrific experiences, and despite the efforts of some victims to escape or resist, the majority of people fell victim to the genocide of the camps. One of the major extermination camps created during Operation Reinhard was Treblinka, getting its name from a nearby small village. Jews from Warsaw were shipped there to be killed. In total, Treblinka was responsible for the deaths of 750,000 people. Another major extermination camp was Belzec. Belzec was the most gruesome camp of them all, and received Jews from Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia, and