Language:
German
Year of publication:
2004
Titel der Quelle:
"Aktion Reinhardt"
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2004) 309-352
Keywords:
Trawniki (Concentration camp)
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Nazi concentration camps
;
World War, 1939-1945 Collaborationists
Abstract:
Numerous indigenous collaborators, both ethnic-German and non-German, proved to be indispensable for the implementation of the Nazi Final Solution in occupied countries - some as shooters during massacres of Jews, others as deportation coordinators. Examines the role of collaborators who took part in Operation Reinhard, the murder of Jews at the killing centers of Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka in 1942-43. In September 1941, a training camp for "reliable" indigenous men was established by the SS in Trawniki, near Lublin. Most of the recruits in 1941-early 1943 were Soviet POWs, for whom this service was the only alternative to death in the German POW camps; some were Polish POWs or civilians. Although ethnic Germans and Ukrainians prevailed among the recruits to Trawniki, other ethnic groups, including Russians and even Central Asian ethnicities, were also present. In summer 1942, some 2,500 Trawniki men served the Nazis in various locations of Poland and Ukraine, and the recruitment of new men continued. The Trawniki men were involved in implementing Operation Reinhard’s three main purposes: killing, forced labor, and confiscation of Jewish property in the camps. They served not only in Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka, but also in Majdanek and other places; they were indispensable in the liquidation of the ghettos in Warsaw, Białystok, and other places; and they also perpetrated mass murders of Jews in Lvov and elsewhere. Besides that, they accompanied and guarded Jewish workers who were sent from Warsaw, Łódź, and other places to the labor camps Poniatowa (where a satellite training center was established in 1943), Budzyń, and others. Collaborators from the Trawniki camp carried out the most brutal work for the Germans; estimates that they executed ca. 28% of the European Jews during the Holocaust.
Note:
Appeared also in "Aktion Reinhardt" (2004) 309-352, and in Polish in "Akcja Reinhardt" (2004) 103-131. A revised English version appeared as "Foot soldiers of the Final Solution; the Trawniki training camp and Operation Reinhard" in "Holocaust and Genocide Studies" 25,1 (2011) 1-99.
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