Operation Reinhard:
Introduction & Editorial Notes
On January 30, 1942, Hitler reaffirmed to the German public his
prewar prophecy that a world war would result in the destruction of Jewry.
Three days later, in private, he told Himmler and other evening guests:
Today we must conduct the same struggle that Pasteur and Koch had to
fight. The cause of countless ills is a bacillus: the Jew. . . . We will
become healthy if we eliminate the Jew.
--(Hitler's speech in the Sportplast on 30 Jan. 1942, reprinted in Max
Domarus, Hitler, Reden und Proklamationen 1932-1945. Munich,
1965, II, 1,828-29; Adolf Hitler, Monologe im
Führerhauptquartier 1941-1944: Die Aufzeichnungen Heinrich Heims.
ed. Werner Jochmann, Hamburg, 1980. 293, 2 Feb. 1942)
Two months later Hitler associated himself completely with Himmler's broad
plans for Germanization of the East. According to what Gottlob Berger
heard from a firsthand source, Hitler told a group of officers whom he
decorated with the Iron Cross with oak-leaf cluster:
I know exactly how far I have to go, but it is so that the whole East
becomes and remains German--primeval German [urdeutsch] . . . We don't
need to express our ideas about that now, and I will not speak about it.
That [task] I have given to my Himmler and he is already accomplishing
it.
--(Berger to Himmler, 10 April 1942, NA RG 242, T-175/R
127/2649922)
Here was the politician calculatingly allowing subordinates to carry out
his dirty work. . . the nature of which would become clear all too soon
. . . (Breitman, 234-35).
After the assassination (mid-1942) of Reinhard Heydrich, Hitler's Reich
Protector of Bohemia-Moravia, the destruction of the Jews in the
Government General (Poland) became formally known as "Operation Reinhard,"
in a final tribute to the slain Nazi. This document will outline the
history and effectiveness of the Reinhard camps.
Arad's preface offers these reflections:
BELZEC, SOBIBOR, & TREBLINKA: An integral part of the Nazi killing machine
in occupied Poland--these camps served one purpose, and one purpose
only--the total destruction of the Jewish people.
The Nazi leaders adopted and executed a deliberate and massive campaign of
genocide which has been documented beyond dispute and is accepted by an
entire world, excepting only those Neo-Nazi elements cloaking their
continuing hatred of the Jewish people in pseudo-historical nonsense.
The existence of
Belzec,
Sobibor,
Treblinka,
Auschwitz,
Maidanek,
Chelmno
and others is beyond question. The purpose for which these camps were
created is also beyond question. (Request reinhard preface.arad)
This article is the result of the combined effort of many, and contains
data from myriad sources. I would like to acknowledge the assistance of
the subscribers to the Holocaust Research Information List. Without their
contributions, this document could not have been written.
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