16.03.2023
81ST ANNIVERSARY OF THE LIQUIDATION OF THE GHETTO AT LUBLIN'S PODZAMCZE AND THE BEGINNING OF OPERATION "REINHARDT"
On 16 March 1942, at 5.30 p.m. Hermann Höfle - an Austrian Nazi, at the head of the so-called "resettlement staff", and the chief logistician of the extermination of Jews in the General Government - convened a meeting of SS officers, security police functionaries, and the German civil administration representatives in Lublin. The subject of the meeting briefing was Odilo Globocnik's planned operation to liquidate the ghetto in Lublin‘s Podzamcze.
A note preserved from the briefing drawn up by Fritz Reuter, an employee of the Lublin District Governor's Office, although written in euphemistic language, contains plans for the extermination of Jews. During the meeting, Höfle conveyed to his colleagues:
1. It would be appropriate to divide transports of Jews arriving in the Lublin district already at the departure station into the fit and unfit for labour. If it is not possible to make this separation at the departure station, it would be advisable to divide the transports in Lublin according to this principle.
2. All Jews unfit for labour are to be transported to Bełżec, the farthest border station of the Zamość county.
3. Haupsturmführer Höfle intends to build a large camp where the Jews that are fit for labour will be registered according to their professions, and where the demand for them can be made [they are referring to the Majdanek camp].
[...] He concluded by declaring that he could receive 4-5 transports of 1,000 Jews a day, directed to the Bełżec station. These Jews, having crossed the border, would never return to the General Government.
Only a few hours after that meeting, the German and Austrian SS and security police functionaries, supported by Trawniki watchmen, entered the ghetto in Podzamcze. From there they sent about a thousand Jews, who were completely unaware of their fate, in freight cars to the Bełżec extermination camp every following day. The annihilation of the Jewish Lublin marked the beginning of a genocidal operation codenamed 'Einsatz Reinhardt'.
The toll of the operation was close to 2 million Jews murdered between 1942 and 1943: in the extermination camps in Treblinka, Bełżec, and Sobibór, in the Majdanek concentration camp, Majdanek, in mass executions accompanying the "displacement actions", during executions in labour camps, raids and manhunts for fugitives in towns, villages and forests. Most of the victims were the Jews from the General Government, Bezirk Białystok, and the Reichskommissariat East. Some of them also came from outside of occupied Poland - from the Third Reich, Austria, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Slovakia, Greece, Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, France, and Belarus.
More information about the codename, course, extermination camps, perpetrators and victims of operation "Reinhardt" is available in materials prepared by the Museum:
Documentary film: “The traces of Operation ‘Reinhardt’ in Lublin”
Special issue of the Museum’s “Varia” magazine
Die Ermordung der Juden im Generalgouvernement
Death Camp in Bełżec Monograph
SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor. German Death Camp 1942–1943. Exhibition Catalogue
