Nisko Plan

The Nisko Plan was an operation to deport Jews to the Lublin District of the General Governorate of occupied Poland in 1939. Organized by Nazi Germany, the plan was cancelled in early 1940.

The idea for the expulsion and resettlement of the Jews of Europe^[1] into a remote corner of the Generalgouvernement territory, bordering the cities of Lublin and Nisko, was devised by Adolf Hitler and formulated by his SS henchmen. The plan was developed in September 1939, after the invasion of Poland, and implemented between October 1939 and April 1940, in contrast to similar Nazi "Madagascar" and other Jewish relocation plans that had been drawn up before the attack on Poland, at the beginning of World War II.^[2]^[3]^[4] It bore similarities to the American Indian reservations.^[5]

Hitler devised the idea with the help of Nazi chief ideologist Alfred Rosenberg and Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, including the participation of SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann ("architect of the Holocaust"); as well as Heinrich Müller of the Gestapo, Hans Frank (Hitler's lawyer) and Arthur Seyss-Inquart of the Generalgouvernement administration. Gruppenführer Odilo Globocnik, the former Gauleiter of Vienna who was appointed the SS and Police Leader of the new Lublin District, was put in charge of the reservation. During the early implementation of the plan, the Nazis set up a system of ghettos for Jewish civilians to use them as forced labor for the German war effort. The first forced labor camps were established for the Burggraben project intended to fortify the Nazi–Soviet demarcation line and to supply the local SS units at Lublin from Lipowa.^[3]^[6]

In total, about 95,000 Jews were deported to the Lublin reservation.^[7] The main camp of the entire complex was set up in Bełżec initially (before the construction of death camps) for Jewish forced labor. In March 1942, it became the first Nazi extermination camp of Operation Reinhard, with permanent gas chambers arranged by Christian Wirth in fake shower rooms.^[8] Though the Burggraben camps were temporarily closed in late 1940, many of them were reactivated in 1941. Two additional extermination camps, Sobibor and Majdanek, were later set up in the Lublin district. The Lipowa camp became a subcamp of the latter in 1943. The Nisko Plan was abandoned for pragmatic reasons; nevertheless, the Zwangsarbeitslagers (German for "forced labor camps") already established for DAW became the industrial base of other SS projects such as Ostindustrie. A number of them functioned until Aktion Erntefest, others beyond the massacres.^[9]

^ Norman M. Naimark, Fires of hatred: ethnic cleansing in twentieth-century Europe Harvard University Press, 2001, p. 71.
^ Google Books search results for the "Lublin reservation", the "Nisko plan", and the "Lublin plan". Also in Livia Rothkirchen, The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust, University of Nebraska Press, 2005.
^ ^a ^b Christopher R. Browning, The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution. Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0521558786.
^ Israel Gutman, Peter Longerich, Julius H. Shoeps, Enzyklopädie des Holocaust: die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden, Piper, 1995, p. 409, ISBN 3-87024-300-7.
^ Beorn, Waitman Wade (2018). The Holocaust in Eastern Europe: At the Epicenter of the Final Solution. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 108. ISBN 978-1-4742-3221-0. Under this plan, the Nazis would deport all the Jews of Europe to a specific region near Lublin, where they would be consolidated, much like the Native Americans reservations in the United States.
^ Google books returns for "Nisko reservation", including literature in English for "Lublin Reservat" and past-1994 publications on the "Nisko Reservat".
^ Rozett, Robert; Spector, Shmuel (2013). Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Routledge. p. 47. ISBN 978-1135969509.
^ "Aktion Reinhard and the Emergence of 'The Final Solution'". Deathcamps.org. 2014. Retrieved 15 April 2016. Lublin Headquarters. {{cite web}}: External link in |quote= (help)
^ Schulte, Jan Erik (2007). de Gruyter, Walter (ed.). Juden in der Ostindustrie GmbH (in German). Institut für Zeitgeschichte. pp. 54–56. ISBN 978-3110956856. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)

[Naimark-1] Norman M. Naimark, Fires of hatred: ethnic cleansing in twentieth-century Europe Harvard University Press, 2001, p. 71.

[2] Google Books search results for the "Lublin reservation", the "Nisko plan", and the "Lublin plan". Also in Livia Rothkirchen, The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust, University of Nebraska Press, 2005.

[Browning-1995-3] Christopher R. Browning, The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution. Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0521558786.

[GLS-4] Israel Gutman, Peter Longerich, Julius H. Shoeps, Enzyklopädie des Holocaust: die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden, Piper, 1995, p. 409, ISBN 3-87024-300-7.

[5] Beorn, Waitman Wade (2018). The Holocaust in Eastern Europe: At the Epicenter of the Final Solution. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 108. ISBN 978-1-4742-3221-0. Under this plan, the Nazis would deport all the Jews of Europe to a specific region near Lublin, where they would be consolidated, much like the Native Americans reservations in the United States.

[6] Google books returns for "Nisko reservation", including literature in English for "Lublin Reservat" and past-1994 publications on the "Nisko Reservat".

[Encyclopedia-7] Rozett, Robert; Spector, Shmuel (2013). Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Routledge. p. 47. ISBN 978-1135969509.

[ARC-Reinhard-8] "Aktion Reinhard and the Emergence of 'The Final Solution'". Deathcamps.org. 2014. Retrieved 15 April 2016. Lublin Headquarters. {{cite web}}: External link in |quote= (help)

[9] Schulte, Jan Erik (2007). de Gruyter, Walter (ed.). Juden in der Ostindustrie GmbH (in German). Institut für Zeitgeschichte. pp. 54–56. ISBN 978-3110956856. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)

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