Himmler Visits 

“Aktion Reinhard” Facilities

The preparation for the extermination of the Jews of the Generalgouvernement had actually started months before the "Wannsee Conference". A special organisation was formed which came to be called “Aktion Reinhard”, probably named in honour of Reinhard Heydrich after his assassination in Prague.

This organisation was established under the command of SS and Police Leader Lublin Odilo Globocnik, who had been appointed by Himmler, to manage the murder programme.  

On 20/21 July 1941, Himmler visited Globocnik in Lublin and decided to enlarge and extend the SS economic enterprises there. In an official note, Himmler instructed the SSPF Lublin to establish a concentration camp in the city for 25,000 to 50,000 prisoners, with a view to employing them in the workshops and on the building sites of the SS and Police.

Towards the end of 1941 it was decided that the KL Majdanek would also serve as a camp for Soviet POWs. He also ordered the expansion of the work camp 7 Lipowa Street, and the settlement of Germans in the Zamosc region.
 

On 19 July 1942, on the eve of the Great Action concerning the Jews of Warsaw, Himmler visited Sobibor, one of the “Aktion Reinhard” death camps in the Lublin area. On the same tour he also visited the SS Training Camp at Trawniki, where a number of photographs were taken.

He ended his tour with a visit to the “Aktion Reinhard” headquarters in Lublin, and following discussions with Globocnik, concluded that with the completion of the death camps, the Jews of the Generalgouvernement could be exterminated.

 
While still in Lublin on 19 July 1942, Himmler issued an order to “HSSPF Ost”, Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger, to complete the deportation of all of the Jews of the Generalgouvernement by 31 December 1942.
 

In early March 1943, Himmler once again visited the “Aktion Reinhard” Headquarters and the death camps of Sobibor and Treblinka. In anticipation of Himmler’s visit the camps were thoroughly cleansed. Karl Frenzel (Sobibor), testified at his trial regarding this visit:

"The visit was announced a few days ahead. The leadership of the camp took steps to make order in the camp… I was ordered, toget

her with some Unterführer’s and Ukrainian guards, to take over the outside security of the camp and guarantee Himmler’s personal security. When Himmler visited the gassing installation in Camp III, I guarded the surrounding area.

I remember that afterwards all the Unterführer were assembled in the canteen, and Himmler delivered an address to them…”

In honour of Himmler’s visit a special gassing of several hundred young Jewish girls took place. This is confirmed by the testimony of SS-Oberscharführer Hubert Gomerski who served at Sobibor:

The Massacre at Lidice

For centuries Lidice was an ordinary agricultural village, which belonged to the Buštehrad manor, located in a shallow valley of the Lidice Creek in the Kladno district sone 20 km west of Prague. The village is today a quiet town that lies adjacent to valleys and  of meadows, with a few stone ruins of a farmhouse and church, and a striking bronze sculpture of children. This is the site of the original village, and what happened here  on June 10th, 1942, shocked the entire world.

The Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia had tragic consequences for Lidice. In order to suppress the growing anti-Fascist resistance movement, security police chief SS Obergruppenfuhrer - Reinherd Heydrich was appointed deputy Reichs-protektor in September 1941. During his short reign of terror, 5000 anti-Fascist fighters and their helpers were imprisoned.

The courts working under martial law were kept busy and the Nazis even had people summarily executed without a trial in order to spread fear throughout the country. So many people throughout the Sudetenland died  on the scaffold from Heydrich' s persecution, that he earned himself the nickname the "Hangman".

Edvard Beneš, the leader of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, together with František Moravec, head of Czechoslovak military intelligence, organized and coordinated a resistance network. Hácha, Prime Minister Eliáš, and the Czech resistance acknowledged Beneš's leadership. Active collaboration between London and the Czechoslovak home front was maintained throughout the war years.

The most significant act of resistance was the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich during a mission codenamed: Operation Anthropoid. Two Czech patriots, Jan Kubis and Joseph Gabcik, serving with the Polish forces in Britain, volunteered to be dropped by parachute near Prague.

Their mission, to assassinate SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, the Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. The ambush took place on May 27, 1942, as Heydrich drove to his office. Severely wounded, he was rushed to Bulovka Hospital where he died eight days later.

Soon after his death, the Nazi reprisals began when an enraged Hitler ordered Heydrich's underling SS Gruppenführer Karl Hermann Frank to initiate  mass executions of the Czech populace,  but Frank persuaded him first to search for the assassins.

Sonnenstein Euthanasia Centre

Located at Pirna near Dresden, above the river Elbe, Schloss Sonnenstein was built on the site of a former medieval castle and had been used as a mental home since 1811. It was the first major state institution in Germany to be explicitly dedicated to treating, rather than just interning, mentally ill patients. In the 19th century, the reform-oriented hospital was one of the most renowned institutions of its kind in Europe. In 1922 as a Heil und Pflegeananstalt (care and cure institution) it had housed 672 psychiatric patients. In 1939, the respected long time director Hermann Paul Nitsche was at the head of the Sonnenstein state hospital.

In October 1939 the mental home was officially closed. A portion of the institution, located behind the main buildings and not included as part of the killing centre, was used first as a military hospital, and then to house ethnic German refugees from Bessarabia. Another portion of the institution, also in the rear of the property, was retained as a regular mental hospital after confiscation and assumed the name Mariaheim. Between early 1940 and June of that year, the part of the castle located in buildings 1-3 at the front of the property was converted into a euthanasia killing centre.

Building 3 served as a reception area for the arriving victims and buildings 1-2 provided office space and staff quarters. Building 2 (numbered C 16) contained the actual killing facility, including the gas chamber and a crematorium with two stationary coke-fired ovens located in the basement.

A high brick-wall on two sides of the complex shielded it from outside observation, while a tall hoarding was erected to serve a similar purpose on the other two sides. Sleeping quarters for the stokers (brenners) were provided in the attic of building C 16. The physician-in-charge, Horst Schumann, who transferred from Grafeneck, arrived in late April to supervise the final remodelling, and the killing began in June 1940. Sonnenstein was to differ from most of the other killing centres because it did not occupy the entire hospital, which made complete secrecy impossible.  

From the end of June 1940 until September 1942, at least 15,000 persons were killed within the scope of the euthanasia programme and Sonderbehandlung 14f13; a minimum of 13,720 had fallen victim to T4.  One nurse testified that during his three week stay in July 1940 about 1,000 people had been gassed, including youngsters aged fifteen and sixteen.

Well before gassing experiments had started at Auschwitz in late summer 1941, 575 prisoners from that camp were transferred to Sonnenstein on 28 July 1941. Other prisoners also arrived in 1941 and 1942 from Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen, and Buchenwald  concentration camps. A prisoner working as a physician’s secretary was witness to the fate of 190 Buchenwald prisoners gassed at Sonnenstein in July 1941:

Read the full article here:

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/euthan/sonnenstein.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org