Sonderaktion 1005
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Concentration camps Mass-killing sites in Central and Eastern Europe | |
Documentation | Nuremberg trials |
Sonderaktion 1005 (German pronunciation: [zɔndɐakt͡sjoːn aɪ̯ntaʊ̯zəntfʏnf], 'Special Action 1005'), also called Aktion 1005 or Enterdungsaktion (German pronunciation: [ɛntɐdʊŋsakt͡sjoːn], 'Exhumation Action'), was a top-secret Nazi operation conducted from June 1942 to late 1944. The goal of the project was to hide or destroy any evidence of the mass murder that had taken place under Operation Reinhard, the attempted (and largely successful)[1] extermination of all Jews in the General Government occupied zone of Poland. Groups of Sonderkommando prisoners, officially called Leichenkommandos ("corpse units"), were forced to exhume mass graves and burn the bodies; inmates were often put in chains to prevent them from escaping.
The project was put in place to destroy evidence of the genocide that had been committed by the
Operations
In March 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office, placed high-ranking SS functionary Paul Blobel in charge of the Aktion 1005, but its start was delayed after Heydrich died in early June 1942 from wounds sustained in an assassination attempt. It was after the end of June that Heinrich Müller, head of the Gestapo, finally gave Blobel his orders. While the principal aim was to erase evidence of Jewish exterminations, the Aktion would also include non-Jewish victims of Nazi persecution.[2]
Blobel began his work experimenting at the
The semi-industrial incineration of corpses at the
The operation also returned to the scenes of earlier mass killings such as Babi Yar, Ponary, the Ninth Fort,[2] as well as Bronna Góra.[12] By 1944, with Soviet armies advancing, Wilhelm Koppe, head of the Reichsgau Wartheland, ordered that each of the five districts of General Government territory set up its own Aktion 1005 commando to begin "cleaning" mass graves. The operations were not entirely successful, as the advancing Soviet troops reached some of the sites before they could be cleared.[2]
Aftermath
At the
In November 1942, in Eichmann's office in Berlin, I met Standartenfuehrer Plobel [sic], who was leader of Kommando 1005, which was specially assigned to remove all traces of the final solution of the Jewish problem by Einsatz Groups and all other executions. Kommando 1005 operated from at least autumn 1942 to September 1944 and was all this period subordinated to Eichmann. The mission was constituted after it first became apparent that Germany would not be able to hold all the territory occupied in the East and it was considered necessary to remove all traces of the criminal executions that had been committed. While in Berlin in November 1942, Plobel [sic] gave a lecture before Eichmann's staff of specialists on the Jewish question from the occupied territories. He spoke of the special incinerators he had personally constructed for use in the work of Kommando 1005. It was their particular assignment to open the graves and remove and cremate the bodies of persons who had been previously executed. Kommando 1005 operated in Russia, Poland and through the Baltic area. I again saw Plobel [sic] in Hungary in 1944 and he stated to Eichmann in my presence that the mission of Kommando 1005 had been completed. — SS-Hauptsturmführer Dieter Wisliceny[13]
Blobel was sentenced to death by the US
The prosecution at the trial of Eichmann in 1961 attempted to prove that Eichmann was Blobel's superior, but the court did not accept it. Blobel's superior was actually Heinrich Müller.[15]
References
- )
- ^ a b c d e f Arad, Yitzhak (1984), "Operation Reinhard: Extermination Camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka" (PDF), Yad Vashem Studies XVI, pp. 205–239, archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-03-18,
The Attempt to Remove Traces.
- ^ a b Operation Reinhard: "The attempt to remove traces" Archived 2015-12-24 at the Wayback Machine (reprint) Nizkor.org 2012. Retrieved 5 June 2014.
- ISBN 025320884X. Retrieved 30 August 2015.
- ^ )
- ^ International Katyn Commission (30 April 1943). "Commission Findings". Transcript, Smolensk 30 April 1943. Warsaw Uprising by Project InPosterum. Retrieved 5 June 2014.
- ^ Kużniar-Plota, Małgorzata (30 November 2004). "Decision to commence investigation into Katyn Massacre". Departmental Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation. Archived from the original on 30 September 2012. Retrieved 5 June 2014.
- ^ Sturdy Colls, Caroline (22 January 2012). "Treblinka: Revealing the hidden graves of the Holocaust". BBC News Magazine. Retrieved 5 June 2014.
- ISBN 978-0-14-311671-4 also at Google Books preview
- eye-witnessreport by an escaped prisoner of the camp.
- ^ "Treblinka". Holocaust Encyclopedia (10 June 2013). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 5 June 2014.
- Museum of the History of Polish Jews Virtual Shtetl2014.
- ^ a b Prof. Stuart Stein: "Affidavit of Dieter Wisliceny", from Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Volume VIII. USGPO, Washington, 1946, pp. 606–619. Note: SS-Hauptsturmführer Dieter Wisliceny in his testimony given before the International Military Tribunal at Nurnberg, 3 January 1946, erroneously identifies the Auschwitz concentration camp complex as the concentration area Sosnowitz, which was one of its dozens of subcamps.
- ^ "Case Closed". Time. June 18, 1951. Archived from the original on 2008-10-13.
- ^ Birn, Ruth Bettina (2011). "Fifty Years After: A Critical Look at the Eichmann Trial". Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law. 44: 443–473.
Sources
- ISBN 0-253-21305-3.
- Baranovskiy, Mikhail: Tango of Death. A True Story of Holocaust Survivors. Mr. Mintz Publishing, 2020. ISBN 9798620147014.
- Edelheit, Abraham J., and Edelheit, Herschel, History of the Holocaust, Westview Press, 1995. ISBN 0-8133-2240-5.
- Spector, Shmuel. "Aktion 1005—effacing the murder of millions"(archive) Oxford Journals, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Volume 5, Issue 2. pp. 157–173. .