On October 27, 1942, Heinrich Himmler issued an order to Hans-Adolf Prützmann, the Higher SS and Police Leader in Ukraine, commanding to “immediately clear and annihilate the Ghetto in Pinsk”. The only exemption was to be 1,000 Jewish forced laborers, who were to be handed over to the Wehrmacht. However, if their secure confinement could not be guaranteed, they too were to be “annihilated.”
A radio message from the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (SS-WVHA) to the Auschwitz concentration camp, dated 26 August 1942, shows how SS officials used euphemistic language to arrange the delivery of Zyklon-B supplies. In the message, the SS camp administration was granted authorization for a 5-ton truck to travel from Auschwitz to Dessau and back to collect “material for special treatment” (Material für Sonderbehandlung). The phrase “special treatment” was an euphemism for extrajudicial killings carried ou by Nazi police and security forces.
German military report from March 19, 1942 on the mood and conditions of the civilian population in Lemberg (now Lviv, Ukraine) located in the General Gouvernement during the Nazi occupation. The document mentions that “among the Jewish population of Lemberg, noticeable anxiety has arisen in connection with a resettlement action that has begun, by which approximately 30,000 elderly and otherwise non-working Jews of Lemberg are being gathered and, according to reports, transported to the Lublin area. To what extent this evacuation will amount to a decimation remains to be seen.” The deportations were the beginning of mass transports to the Bełżec extermination camp as part of Operation Reinhard.
On September 16, 1942, SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl, head of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, sent a letter to Heinrich Himmler summarizing a recent meeting with Albert Speer, Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production. Among the topics discussed was the planned expansion of Auschwitz concentration camp and its role to supply the armaments industry with Jewish forced labor. Pohl reported that Auschwitz was to be enlarged to accommodate up to 132,000 prisoners and that “the labor force available in concentration camps must now be used for large-scale armaments tasks.” He explained that the primary source of this labor would be Jews drawn from deportation transports to Auschwitz: “Able-bodied Jews designated for eastern migration will have to interrupt their journey and perform armaments labor.” Pohl also stressed that the deployment of Jewish laborers already cleared of Jews “must under no circumstances take place.” The already sealed fate of Jews deemed unfit for labor was not addressed in the official discussion.
In a report dated 6 March 1942, Oberregierungsrat Paul Haensel presented findings from his inspection trip to Minsk. According to prison officials and legal personnel, “approximately 280 civilian prisoners were taken from the prison in Minsk by the SD, led to a pit, and shot”, with another 30 prisoners executed shortly afterwards “since the pit’s capacity had not yet been fully used”. Haensel concluded there was “no justification for this mass shooting without any due process”. The killings were “allegedly carried out to combat typhus”, yet, as Haensel noted “there were no cases of typhus in the prison either before or after the incident”. The Minister for the Eastern Territories, Alfred Rosenberg, protested the executions to Heinrich Himmler, prompting a written response from Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), on 25 March. Heydrich claimed the situation had been misunderstood. According to him, 328 prisoners were shot on January 28, 1942 as the prison was a typhus hotspot. Heydrich closed his letter by warning Rosenberg’s deputy and Gauleiter Alfred Meyer to be cautious about believing reports coming from Minsk, also citing as example “the accusation of improper Jewish evacuations”.
Memo dated June 5, 1942, authored by SS-Hauptsturmführer Willy Just of RSHA office II D 3 a (Motor Vehicle Department of the Security Police) on technical modifications to the gas vans used in mass killing operations. Just reports that “since December 1941 97,000 have been processed using 3 deployed vehicles, without any defects occurring in the vehicles” and “the known explosion in Kulmhof (Chełmno) is to be considered an isolated case due to an operating error”. He proposes the following “technical modifications to the special vehicles currently in operation and those under production”, among other things ventilation slots on the upper rear wall to allow “a rapid inflow of CO without causing overpressure”. The proposal was reviewed by Walther Rauff, head of the Motor Vehicle Department, on June 10, 1942. He approved the implementation of the modifications on a prototype vehicle.
The Swiss cardiologist and medical captain Robert Hegglin participated in the so-called third medical mission of the Swiss Red Cross, which took place in Riga, Daugavpils, and Pskov between 18 June and 26 September 1942. Over the course of several months, he documented his experiences in detail in his diary—from train journeys through ravaged Latvia and Russia to clinical cases in overstretched hospitals. Among his most entries is a report on the mass shootings of Jews in Nazi-occupied Latvia: “…based on the reports available to me from German soldiers, officers, and Latvians, that nearly 100,000 Jews have been shot in the Riga area alone since the German occupation. […] If the Germans truly require such bloody atrocities, then they are unfit to become the masters of Europe.”
In late 1942, several thousand Poles were deported from Zamosc, Poland, following Nazi racial classifications that determined their fate. This process was part of Himmler’s directive on November 12, 1942, to make Zamosc the “first German settlement area in the Generalgouvernement”. Those deemed racially “inferior” were sent to Auschwitz, with a transport of 644 individuals departing Zamosc on December 10, 1942. On December 16, SS-Untersturmführer Heinrich Kinna from the migration central offic, wrote a report on the transport. He summarized his conversation with Auschwitz deputy commandant Hans Aumeier, who disclosed that “Imbeciles, idiots, cripples, and sick people must be removed from the camp promptly through liquidation to unburden the camp. This measure, however, encounters complications, as per RSHA orders, Poles, unlike Jews, must die a natural death.”
Radio message from the Gendarmerie District Ostrowo to the Gendarmerie post in Adelnau, dated May 16, 1942. The message reported that “six Jews escaped from a transport in Eichstätt”. Eichstätt, known in Polish as Dąbie, is the closest town to Kulmhof (Chełmno) extermination camp, approximately 6 km southeast of Chełmno nad Nerem.
A form sheet by SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle dated July 18, 1942, on the individual’s responsibilities and strict secrecy surrounding their assignment “for carrying out tasks in connection with the Jewish resettlement as part of ‘Operation Reinhardt'”. The document mandates that “under no circumstances am I to communicate … any information regarding the course, execution, or incidents of the Jewish resettlement”. It further emphasizes that all operations associated with Jewish resettlement are classified as “a Secret Reich Matter” and “prohibits any photography within the camps of Operation Reinhardt”.