Sonderkommando Reinhard

Copy of a letter dated October 27, 1943, from SS-Gruppenführer Odilo Globocnik to SS-Gruppenführer von Herff of the SS Personnel Office on the personnel assigned to his office during his tenure as SS and Police Leader in Lublin. Globocnik reports a total staff of 405 men, including 92 personnel assigned “from the Führer’s Chancellery for the execution of Aktion Reinhard” – a reference to the Nazi operation responsible for the mass murder of Jews in occupied Poland through the extermination camps at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. The letter further notes that “Einsatz Reinhardt has been completely discontinued”.

On 11 January 1943, SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle, coordinator of Operation Reinhard(t), sent top-secret telegrams on its death toll to SS officials Adolf Eichmann at the RSHA in Berlin and Franz Heim at the Security Police in Kraków. These messages – intercepted by the British – provide precise data on the mass deportations – totaling 1,274,166 Jewish victims – to the extermination camps at Belzec (B), Sobibor (S), Treblinka (T), and the Majdanek / Lublin (L) concentration camp by the end of 1942.

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”.

In 1942, the SS Main Office pursued an investigation into Oskar Dirlewanger, commander of the notorious penal unit, Sonderkommando Dirlewanger. The charges, raised by the SD and the SS and Police Court in Cracow, included racial defilement, abuse of his men, extortion, illegal hunting and confiscations, unlawful arrests, and unauthorized killings within the General Government. During his interrogation on September 1, 1942, Dirlewanger told the SS court martial officer that the KdS Lublin was overwhelmed by the volume of Jews to be executed. He stated that, in November 1941, Odilo Globocnik, SS and Police Leader of the Lublin district, ordered that these detainees be transferred to him for execution. Initially, Dirlewanger “had these Jews shot”; however, later “they were then injected with strychnine by the SS doctor, and their teeth were extracted”.

On July 19, 1942, Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer of the SS, issued a directive ordering the complete “resettlement of the entire Jewish population of the General Government” to be carried out by December 31, 1942. The order specified that no persons of Jewish origin were to remain in the area after this date, except those confined in designated “collection camps” located in Warsaw, Krakow, Częstochowa, Radom, or Lublin. Himmler emphasized that this action was “in the interest of the security and cleanliness of the German Reich and its spheres of interest.”

Interrogation report dated September 30, 1942, documenting the questioning of SS-Oberscharführer Heinrich Feiertag by an SS court officer regarding allegations against Oskar Dirlewanger, infamous leader of the “Sonderkommando Dirlewanger”, known for its brutality on the Eastern Front. In his testimony, Feiertag acknowledged “hearing rumors about the poisoning of Jews with strychnine”. When confronted with accusations that he was involved in producing soap from human fat, he dismissed them as “slander spoken against me” and stated, “I only shot one Jew, so I would have been lacking material of this origin”.

On 23 June, 1942, SS-Oberführer Viktor Brack from Hitler’s Chancellory wrote to Heinrich Himmler on the matter of mass sterilisation of Jews considered fit for work by the Nazis and implies that the Jews not fit for forced labour will perish. He connects the latter activities to the “special task” of SS-Brigadeführer Odilo Globocnik, to whom he had provided “some of my men” (i.e. staff from the Nazi Euthansasia program). Brack notes that “Globocnik expressed the view that the entire Jewish action should be carried out as quickly as possible” and recalls Himmler’s statement that “we must work as quickly as possible for reasons of camouflage”. Globocnik carried out the mass murder of Jews mentioned in this letter through Operation Reinhard (Aktion Reinhard / Reinhardt) in the extermination camps in the General Gouvernement: Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka.