Operation Reinhard
Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt (German: Aktion Reinhard or Aktion Reinhardt; also Einsatz Reinhard or Einsatz Reinhardt) was the codename of the secret German plan in World War II to exterminate Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied Poland. This deadliest phase of the Holocaust was marked by the introduction of extermination camps. The operation proceeded from March 1942 to November 1943; around 1.47 million Jews were murdered in just 100 days from July to October 1942, a rate approximately 83% higher than the commonly suggested figure for the kill rate in the Rwandan genocide.
| Operation Reinhard | |
|---|---|
| Location | General Government in German-occupied Poland |
| Date | March 1942 – November 1943 |
| Incident type | Mass deportations to extermination camps |
| Perpetrators | Odilo Globočnik, Hermann Höfle, Richard Thomalla, Erwin Lambert, Christian Wirth, Heinrich Himmler, Franz Stangl and others. |
| Organizations | SS, Order Police battalions, Sicherheitsdienst, Trawnikis |
| Camp | Belzec Sobibor Treblinka Additional: Majdanek Auschwitz II |
| Ghetto | European and Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland including Białystok, Częstochowa, Kraków, Lublin, Łódź, Warsaw and others |
| Victims | Around 2 million Jews |
During the operation, as many as two million Jews were sent to Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka to be murdered in purpose-built gas chambers. In addition, facilities for mass-murder using Zyklon B were developed at about the same time at the Majdanek concentration camp and at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, near the earlier-established Auschwitz I camp.