Operation Reinhard

Operation Reinhard
Jews from the Siedlce Ghetto forced onto a train to Treblinka.[1]
Location	General Government in German-occupied Poland
Date	March 1942 – November 1943[2]
Incident type	Mass deportations to extermination camps
Perpetrators	Odilo Globočnik, Hermann Höfle, Richard Thomalla, Erwin Lambert, Christian Wirth, Heinrich Himmler, Franz Stangl and others.
Organizations	SS, Order Police battalions, Sicherheitsdienst, Trawnikis
Camp	Belzec Sobibor Treblinka Additional: Chełmno Majdanek Auschwitz II
Ghetto	European and Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland including Białystok, Częstochowa, Kraków, Lublin, Łódź, Warsaw and others
Victims	Around 2 million Jews

Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt (German: Aktion Reinhard or Aktion Reinhardt; also Einsatz Reinhard or Einsatz Reinhardt) was the codename of the secret German plan in World War II to exterminate Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied Poland. This deadliest phase of the Holocaust was marked by the introduction of extermination camps.^[3] The operation proceeded from March 1942 to November 1943; about 1.47 million or more Jews were murdered in just 100 days from late July to early November 1942, a rate which is approximately 83% higher than the commonly suggested figure for the kill rate in the Rwandan genocide.^[2] In the time frame of July to October 1942, the overall death toll, including all killings of Jews and not just Operation Reinhard, amounted to two million killed in those four months alone.^[4] It was the single fastest rate of genocidal killing in history.^[5]

During the operation, as many as two million Jews were sent to Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka to be murdered in purpose-built gas chambers.^[3][6] In addition, facilities for mass-murder using Zyklon B were developed at about the same time at the Majdanek concentration camp^[3] and at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, near the earlier-established Auschwitz I camp.^[7]