The Operation Reinhard Death Camps

Under the code name Operation Reinhard, more than one and a half million Jews were murdered between 1942 and 1943 in the concentration camps of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, located in Nazi-occupied Poland. Unlike more well-known camps, which were used both for slave labor and extermination, these camps existed purely to murder Jews. Few victims survived to tell their stories, and the camps were largely forgotten after they were dismantled in 1943. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps bears eloquent witness to this horrific tragedy. This newly revised and expanded edition includes new material on the history of the Jews under German occupation in Poland; the execution and timing of Operation Reinhard; information about the ghettos in Lublin, Warsaw, Krakow, Radom, and Galicia; and updated numbers of the victims who were murdered during deportations. In addition to documenting the horror of the camps, Yitzhak Arad recounts the stories of those courageous enough to struggle against the Nazis and their "final solution." Arad's work retrieves the experiences of Operation Reinhard's victims and survivors from obscurity and exposes a terrible chapter in humanity's history.

Yitzhak Arad has written many books, including In the Shadow of the Red Banner, Ghetto in Flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust, and Pictorial History of the Holocaust. He served as Director (Chairman of the Directorate) of the International Council of Yad Vashem, Holocaust Remembrance Authority, for 21 years.

Preface
Introduction
Part One: The Extermination Machine
1. The Jews of the General Government, September 1939-June 1941: Deportations and Ghettoization
2. The Road to Operation Reinhard
3. Operation Reinhard: Organization and Manpower
4. Belzec: Construction and Establishing the Method of Annihilation
5. Construction of Sobibor
6. Construction of Treblinka
7. Preparing for the Deportations
8. Expulsion from the Ghettos
9. The Trains of Death
10. Belzec: March 17 to June, 1942
11. Sobibor: May to July, 1942
12. Treblinka: July 23 to August 28, 1942
13. Reorganization in Treblinka
14. The Mission of Gerstein and Pfannenstiel
15. Jewish Working Prisoners
16. Women Prisoners
17. Improving Extermination Techniques and Installations
18. The Annihilation of the Jews in the General Government
19. Deportations from Bialystok General District (Bezirk Bialystok) and Reichskommissariat Ostland
20. Transports from Other European Countries
21. The Extermination of Gypsies
22. The Economic Plunder
23. Himmler's Visit to Sobibor and Treblinka
24. The Erasure of the Crimes
Part Two: Life in the Shadow of Death
25. Portraits of the Perpetrators
26. The Prisoners' Daily Life
27. The Prisoners and the Deportees
28. Faith and Religion
29. Diseases, Epidemics, and Suicide
30. Social Life
Part Three: Escape and Resistance
31. The Cognizance and Reaction of the Victims in Occupied Poland
32. Escapes from the Trains and Spontaneous Acts of Resistance
33. Escapes from the Camps
34. The Underground in Treblinka
35. The Plan for the Uprising in Treblinka
36. August 2, 1943: The Uprising in Treblinka
37. Pursuit and Escape from Treblinka
38. Ideas and Organization for Resistance in Sobibor
39. The Underground in Sobibor
40. The Plan for the Uprising in Sobibor
41. October 14, 1943: The Uprising in Sobibor
42. Pursuit and Escape from Sobibor
43. Survival among the Local Population
44. Operation Reinhard and Reports about the Death Camps in Polish Wartime Publications
45. An Evaluation of the Uprisings and Their Results
Part Four: The Final Stage of Operation Reinhard
46. Operation Erntefest
47. The Liquidation of the Camps and the Termination of Operation Reinhard
48. Assessing the Number of Victims of Operation Reinhard
Epilogue
Appendix A. The Deportation of the Jews from the General Government, Bialystok General District, and Ostland
Appendix B. The Fate of the Perpetrators of Operation Reinhard
Bibliography
Index