Belzec: Stepping Stone to Genocide

229 Pages·2008·2.955 MB·English

by  Robin O’Neil

Forward:
On an impulse holiday in June 1974, I traveled by train to Poland and Ukraine (former province of East Galicia). I
was honoring a pledge I had given some years earlier to an elderly Jew I had dealt with at the Crown Court in
London, when he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for committing serious fraud. Despite his criminal
record, he was a decent man who told me the story about his parents and relatives who had all died in the
Holocaust. Now he was on his own, without family, relatives, or friends.
During the course of many interviews he pleaded with me to find the men responsible and expose the tragedy
of Galician Jewry, particularly the men responsible for the demise of his own family, who had lived in the Galician
town of Kolomyja. It transpired that just before the German onslaught in June 1941 into east Galicia, he fled east
to Kiev. After the war he returned to Kolomyja where he discovered his loss: 37 near and dear relatives had all
perished, believed murdered in local forests, the Janowska camp, and the extermination camp of Belzec.
This was a tall order as, at the time, I had no real interest and other priorities. Thus I had no reason to pick up
the challenge. Belzec, Galicia, Kolomyja had not yet come into my vocabulary, but the more I thought about it,
the more I dabbled in Holocaust literature and the more I sensed the injustice of post-war retribution for the
men who had committed what appeared to me as the world's greatest crime.
Sadly, after two years of serving his sentence he died suddenly from natural causes. As it turned out, I took up
the challenge and after 30 years of Holocaust research I have to admit defeat, as I never traced any record of his
named family or any record of their final demise. But what follows is, perhaps, second best: a reappraisal of
historical facts focusing on Belzec as a vehicle plotting the modus operandi of the total destruction of European
Jewry, particularly in east Galicia.
I have done my best: the prosecutor had become his friend and had honored his pledge, but too late for him to
know.
Acknowledgments:
To personally thank the many individuals who have helped and contributed to my research over many years was
an impossible task. From the poor isolated residents in Poland-Ukraine, to close friends, archivists, and academia
in general, I pay due acknowledgement.
Special mention, however, cannot go unrecorded. In Poland, special thanks go to my colleague, Michael Tregenza
in Lublin. To my editors and mentors: Professor John Klier, Sir Martin Gilbert, and Joyce Field (CJ). For technical
support and literary advice: The ARC Foundation International and Professor John Adler.
Robin O'Neil, Salisbury, England 2004
'Yidn, shreibt un farschreibt!
Introduction: .................................................................................................................................... 6
CHAPTER 1 : German Security Services: The police emerge as the middle managers in euthanasia
and leaders in the death camps ........................................................................................................ 14
CHAPTER 2: Euthanasia – precursor to genocide[1] ......................................................................... 26
CHAPTER 3: Hitler's man in the East: Odilo Globocnik ...................................................................... 41
CHAPTER 4: Sources of Manpower ................................................................................................... 51
Selbstschutz Units ......................................................................................................................... 51
Ukrainians in Belzec ....................................................................................................................... 55
Volksdeutsch in Reinhardt ............................................................................................................. 56
Jewish enforced collaboration ...................................................................................................... 59
CHAPTER 5: Crossover from Euthanasia to Genocide ....................................................................... 68
CHAPTER 6: Shootings, Suicides and Disobeying Orders .................................................................. 78
CHAPTER 7: The SS: A Government in Waiting ................................................................................. 86
Camp System ................................................................................................................................. 86
Globocnik's Labor Camps .............................................................................................................. 87
Belzec: The Beginnings .................................................................................................................. 88
Gassing: Experimental Operations ................................................................................................ 88
Ghetto Clearance ........................................................................................................................... 90
CHAPTER 8: Belzec: The Experimental Phase .................................................................................... 91
Survivors from Belzec .................................................................................................................... 94
Experiments ................................................................................................................................... 94
Cruelty in Belzec ............................................................................................................................ 95
Early Deportations from Kolomyja District.................................................................................... 97
Chain of Command in the death camps? ...................................................................................... 98
CHAPTER 9: Deportations to Belzec ................................................................................................ 103
Gas Chambers in the second phase: July – December 1942 ....................................................... 104
Support personnel arrive at Belzec ............................................................................................. 104
Flow to the gas is jeopardized ..................................................................................................... 105
Deportations from Lvov............................................................................................................... 106
Second Phase: Deportations from East Galicia ........................................................................... 106
Resettlement Modus Operandi in Kolomyja and district ............................................................ 107
Road to Belzec ............................................................................................................................. 108
Mass breakouts for survival ........................................................................................................ 110
CHAPTER 10: Belzec: Second Phase ................................................................................................ 115
Entry into the camp ..................................................................................................................... 115
Jewish Labor: a temporary reprieve ............................................................................................ 117
The execution pit ......................................................................................................................... 117
Favors for times gone by ............................................................................................................. 118
Further roundups for Belzec........................................................................................................ 118
Death Brigade at work ................................................................................................................. 119
The SS Panic to hide their nefarious deeds ................................................................................. 120
Belzec's dead: burning of the corpses ......................................................................................... 121
Destroying the evidence .............................................................................................................. 123
Final closing and mass murder of Jewish prisoners .................................................................... 124
Escapes ........................................................................................................................................ 125
CHAPTER 11: The 'Entefest' (Harvest Festival) massacres[1] ........................................................... 131
The removal of Globocnik ........................................................................................................... 131
SS Enterprises .............................................................................................................................. 132
CHAPTER 12: SS Corruption ............................................................................................................. 137
CHAPTER 13: Transfer of Reinhardt personnel to Italy ................................................................... 143
Post Reinhardt deployment: San Sabba and Programme 'R' ...................................................... 143
Resettlement actions................................................................................................................... 144
Personnel knew too much ........................................................................................................... 144
Christian Wirth is shot dead! ....................................................................................................... 145
Final Accounting .......................................................................................................................... 146
Medals and Promotions .............................................................................................................. 146
Globocnik's Suicide ...................................................................................................................... 147
CHAPTER 14: Aftermath and Retribution ........................................................................................ 150
Second Treblinka Trial - 13 May 1970 in Düsseldorf [24] .............................................................. 153
Soviet Retribution ........................................................................................................................ 154
CHAPTER 15: Archaeological Investigations (1997-2000) ............................................................... 156
First Investigation ........................................................................................................................ 156
Second investigation ................................................................................................................... 156
Third Investigation ....................................................................................................................... 157
Fourth Investigation .................................................................................................................... 157
Area of Mass Graves .................................................................................................................... 158
Location and first period 1997: Graves 1- 6[18] ..................................................................... 159
Investigations at the Ramp .......................................................................................................... 160
Four excavations were carried out .............................................................................................. 160
Investigations with Metal Detector ............................................................................................. 160
Second period 1998 and location of Mass Graves ...................................................................... 160
Mass Grave locations 7 – 33 ........................................................................................................ 161
Further investigations with Metal Detector ................................................................................ 163
Ramp Area ................................................................................................................................... 164
Camp Structures .......................................................................................................................... 164
CHAPTER 16: Statistics of 'Resettlement' Transports...................................................................... 167
Glossary ........................................................................................................................................... 172
Bibliography, trial documentation and sources .............................................................................. 175
APPENDIX 1: Deportations to Belzec March – December 1942 ...................................................... 183
APPENDIX 2: Further deportations.................................................................................................. 200
APPENDIX 3: Personnel who served in Aktion Reinhardt Camps .................................................... 219
APPENDIX 4: Community Towns Subjected to Deportation to Belzec ............................................ 225
Introduction:
My search for the truth began at the gates of Belzec in November 1975. Walking out of Belzec railway station I
turned left. After walking for about 400 meters, I came across what looked like the designated former camp site.
There were iron gates and a map of the area in Polish. Local youths were playing football over the grass area;
people were walking and cycling diagonally on a well worn footpath to the next village. Further on, in the wooded
area, was a group of local youths entertaining themselves with alcohol and a barbeque: bottles, tins, and
wrappings, of all descriptions, strewn all over. It had all the appearances of a discarded piece of wasteland found
in any town.
Over to the left, on a sloping escarpment, my hands sifted through the sand, picking out minute pieces of what I
presumed human bone that had been brought to the surface by the weather., Scuffing the surface with my shoe,
a patella, collar bone, pieces of scull came to the surface. Under my feet and the feet of all those socially enjoying
themselves at that time, was the resting place of 600,000 Jews-- men, women and small children-- and this is
how it remained for the next 30 years.
When the scale of catastrophe of the Holocaust was revealed and western civilization came under the magnifying
glass, the symbolic icon chosen to signify this indelible stain on world history was Auschwitz. To a significant
extent Auschwitz-Birkenau stamped its name on the consciousness of the world because its combined role as a
labor camp and death camp enabled a significant number of people to survive and tell their story. Also, the camp
itself remained largely intact to become a site of pilgrimage, whereas by the end of the war Belzec had done its
murderous deeds and had been entirely obliterated. Yet in terms of historical reality, the role of symbol for The
Final Solution could equally be ascribed to the largely forgotten Belzec.
What follows is the background of how this policy of genocide was conceived, put into operation and staffed,
and how the ordinary men involved were caught up in one of the blackest moments in human history.
Local History
If the Second World War had not occurred, Belzec village would to this day be just a name on a map like so many
other obscure border locations in south-eastern Poland. Remove the notoriety of Belzec as a place of the most
gruesome murders, there is very little to report. It was not until about the 1850s that records mention a Jewish
presence in Belzec, which remained static, while far more vibrant Jewish communities were emerging in the
neighboring towns of Tomaszów-Lubelski and Lubycza Krówleska. Belzec is situated between Tomaszow-Lubelski
and Lubycza and is the main trading route between the Polish and Ukrainian centers of commerce, Zamosc and
Rawa Ruska.
There were 14,000 inhabitants living in Tomaszow, including 6,000 Jews (43%). 4,500 of whom managed to
escape over the river Bug to the Soviet Union before the Nazis arrived on September 13, 1939, when Belzec
became a border customs post separating the German-occupied area and the Soviet Union. In Claude Lanzmann's
documentary film Shoah, he uniquely captures the social setting of communities where Jews decided to settle:
very quickly indeed, Jewish entrepreneurial skills and cultural finesse, subordinated the indigenous communities.
Within a very short time, Jews occupied the best house and shops and rose to be the dominating influences in
Polish-Ukrainian society - envied but respected by the less fortunate. Despite the social and religious difficulties,
this uneasy relationship prospered. Belzec village and the adjacent town of Tomaszow-Lubelski were no
exception to this social hierarchy.
In November 1939, all Jews were sent into the ghetto that had been set up in Tomaszów-Lubelski, and in July
1942, the ghetto was closed when many of the Jews were sent down the road to the extermination camp or to
the Cieszanow labor camp. A number of Jews escaped to the forest where they survived living off the land, eating
turnips and fruit; their only shelter was holes they dug in the ground covered with brushwood. They remained
hidden until the Russians arrived, while others joined partisan units operating in the area. From 1943 until the
liberation of the area by the Red Army in July 1944, skirmishes between the 'OUN,” the AK, and other militias
against the German occupation forces were a regular occurrence. Relief came to the entrapped Polish
communities on July 21, 1944, when Soviet and 'AK' units seized the area from the fleeing Germans. By this time
all traces of the Belzec Death Camp had been obliterated, landscaped, and planted with firs. A resident Ukrainian
farmer was now resident in premises hastily built by the Germans before they left the area.
The eastern part of Poland was now occupied by the Russians and would remain so until 1991, when a legitimate
government emerged. There are no major industries in the district, few shops, high unemployment and no sign
of improvement. Belzec and the surrounding villages remain a quiet backwater content with their lot but with
one important element missing: there are no Jews, and the inhabitants, Poles and Ukrainians, are all the poorer
for it. The residents of Belzec are still burdened by the notoriety of the former death camp on their doorstep.
Not only is it the forgotten camp, it was the deadliest and most brutal of all the Nazi killing grounds.
The research that constitutes the basis of this study has been undertaken on a number of different, but related
fronts. It includes critically important data derived from an archaeological survey of the mass graves at Belzec by
forensic archaeologists from Torun University in Poland. By comparing this information with other data of the
transports to Belzec from the Jewish communities of Lublin district, Galicia, and elsewhere, we are able to
envisage the scale of murder committed in the name of the Final Solution in a way that is independent of
eyewitness testimony. Consequently, the evidence contained constitutes substantial proofs of Nazi war crimes
against the Jewish people and incontrovertible body of evidence to confront Holocaust Denial.
In the context of a number of important and hotly debated studies of recent years, which deal with the
background, indoctrination and ideological commitment of those who carried out Nazi war crimes, the evidence
of this study provides an important perspective. The detailed investigation of the German and Austrian personnel
who ran the camp provides a number of insights into the way in which Aktion Reinhardt and its precursor, the
Euthanasia programme, were staffed.
Belzec was commissioned by the highest authority of the Nazi State and acted outside the law of both civil and
military conventions of the time. Under the code Aktion Reinhardt, the death camps were organized, staffed,
and administered by a leadership of middle-ranking police officers and a specially selected civilian cadre who, in
the first instance, had been initiated into the euthanasia program- and their expertise then transferred to
operational duties in the death camps. The hands-on extermination of European Jewry in the death camps of
Reinhardt, the author suggests, was police led, from start to finish.
While this was a top-secret operation, many of those involved were not committed Nazis or even members of
the SS, but ordinary Germans engaged not so much in gratifying their congenital murderous, anti-Semitic
impulses, but either, under personal threat from the leadership or as opportunists hoping to avoid combat duties
and amass personal wealth looted from their victims. Aktion Reinhardt staff was protected by the highest
authority from military and civilian discipline or regulation. They were in effect untouchable.
The principle of police leadership in the Reinhardt camps was unprecedented and was never extended or
repeated in any other penal establishment in the areas of German occupation. The combination of police and
civilians appears to have been a direct policy of the Nazi State. The majority of Reinhardt personnel operating in
these camps became a maverick unit and were given the spurious cover of SS insignia to facilitate their objective.
These men, operating under a 'Geheime Reichssache' ('Secret Reich Affair') became 'the untouchables'. All
outside influences concerning rank, status and human decency meant absolutely nothing to this group. Within
the Reinhardt establishment there was a complete negation of any recognised principals of law and order,
discipline or basic humanitarian considerations.
The men engaged in Reinhardt were practiced in institutional murder since 1940 and were psychologically
conditioned to continue similar duties elsewhere. After all, if they could engage in the murder of their 'own,' they
could hardly be expected to have any inner morale conflict with murdering Jews. Even so, in practice, clinical
institutionalized murder was a far cry from what these men were later faced with in Belzec which called for an
extra dimension of personal commitment. Among the Reinhardt personnel, the motivation for carrying out the
base murder of men, women and children varied according to the individual. Fear among the lower echelons of
the leadership predominated, but others were attracted by generous pay and conditions of service with extra
leave, allowances and opportunities for further advancement. Others were motivated by the spoils of
extermination: corruption, greed, and in some cases by crude prejudices and sadistic self-gratification.
Exemption from frontline duty was an added inducement. In due course, all these men, even those who self-
righteously proclaimed abhorrence of Belzec's purpose, became corrupted when given the power of life and
death over people whom they were encouraged to treat as sub-human.
In the lower ranks, Nazi ideology and anti-Semitism were not the prime driving forces behind the majority of the
mass murderers. It is in the leadership that political indoctrination and rabid anti-Semitism were to be found.
One man in particular, the Stuttgart police officer Christian Wirth, exemplifies this. He will be shown to be the
central cog in the destruction process, even more so than his immediate superior, the designated overlord of
Reinhardt, SS-Brigadeführer Odilo Globocnik. Unlike Himmler and his immediate following, who were driven by
a pseudo-religious ideology, or a 'holy' mission, Wirth remained an enigma, a crude man with uncouth habits
spurred on by an old-fashioned sense of 'duty' and a hatred for Jews.
The significance of Belzec
Belzec was the first camp to be built for one purpose only: the murder of Jews by gassing. This place is one of the
most tragic burial grounds of our civilization and the site of the first technically-based genocide. Consequently,
it has unique significance for our understanding of the Holocaust. Belzec was where mass murder was committed
with military precision on an industrial scale, a human abattoir that operated on a conveyor-belt system where
it is estimated that no less than 600,000 Jews were deliberately put to death. Belzec was designed and set up
outside the Nazi Concentration Camp Inspectorate at Oranienburg. Whereas previously the perpetrators had
sought out their victims for execution, at Belzec the victims were delivered to the executioners and murdered in
secret.
The dates concerning the planning and construction of Belzec suggest quite strongly that the decision to carry
out the genocide was made well before the Wannsee Conference of January 1942, and that conference was little
more than a rubber-stamping exercise designed to implicate a wide range of State agencies in its operation. Even
before the conference, Belzec had already been built, staffed with technicians transferred from the euthanasia
program experimenting with gassing procedures
As discussed above, the personnel employed in Belzec actually reveal a widely-held misconception that only
ideologically-orientated and fanatical Nazis staffed these camps of mass destruction, whereas in fact, many were
not political or particularly anti-Semitic. To support this thesis, the emerging blueprint of destruction has been
traced chronologically.
The State of Current Research
Books on Holocaust related subjects are not the only means by which informed scholarship is measured.
Individual scholars, working quietly in the background and out of the academic and public eye, have written many
of the most provoking research papers: in Melbourne, Australia, independent researcher Joseph Poprzeczny is
about to publish the results of twenty years' work on researching the life of Odilo Globocnik; Lukas Pribyl in the
Czech Republic is nearing completion of his research project concerning the deportation transports from
Bohemia and Moravia. There are many more.
The destruction of European Jewry has been treated in a number of ways by specialists who are at the cutting
edge of Holocaust research: Gerald Reitlinger's The Final Solution (originally published in 1953) is thought-
provoking but focused primarily on Jewish extermination and gives little indication of the inner power struggles
within the General Government. Reitlinger's work has been superseded by Raul Hilberg's magisterial three-
volume Destruction of the European Jews (1985), which in my view remains the definitive work. It is breathtaking
in scope and systematically deals with every aspect of the mechanics of destruction, including German material
on this tragedy. Hilberg also includes an excellent account of the administrative conflict in the General
Government. Martin Gilbert's Holocaust (1987) considers Reinhardt from a broader perspective, while Daniel
Goldhagen's widely-discussed, well-documented and controversial Hitler's Willing Executioners (1997) only
refers to Belzec on three occasions within its references to Reinhardt. Only Yitzhak Arad's Belzec, Sobibór,
Treblinka - The Operation Reinhard Death Camps (1987), and the latest published research by Michael Tregenza
in Lublin, Belzec - Das Vergessene Lager des Holocaust (2000) focuses on Belzec in some depth within the context
of Reinhardt. Christopher C. Browning's prolific scholarship-- Fateful Months (1985), Path to
Genocide (1992), Essays on the Final Solution (1995) The Final Solution and the German Foreign
Office (1978); Ordinary Men; The Reigner Telegramme Reconstructed; Nazi Policy, Jewish Questions, and
Policies; Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers-- are major contributions. The SS training camp at Trawniki
near Lublin was the most important element in providing manpower for Reinhardt. The interesting and most
welcome research paper by David Rich et al enhances our understanding of this subject.
Among the Polish sources, of particular interest are the works of E. Szrojt, and T. Chrosciewicz. For the
deportation operations from the Galician District see T. Berenstein. Other useful sources are An Outline History
of the Lwów Railways 1942-3, which contains interesting facts regarding the deportation transports from Lwów
to Belzec. The information is not precise as the camp in Belzec functioned only until December 1942 year. See
also Dr. Janusz Peter (Kordian), W Belzcu podczas okupacji (In Belzec during the Occupation). When discussing
the Generalplan Ost see Czeslaw Madajczyk's Forschungsstelle für Ostunterkunft (Research Centre for Eastern
Resettlement) and the European-wide Jewish extermination program. On the fate of the Christian Poles who
were left to face the German and Russian onslaughts, there are thought-provoking personal recollections of this
period in Tomasz Piesakowski's The Fate of Poles in the USSR, 1939-1989; the Zygmunt Klukowski Diary 1939-44.
See also Zoë Zajderowa's The Dark Side of the Moon. For the fate of German Jews in Dresden, see the Victor
Klemperer diaries.
From the German side see the diary of Alex Hohenstein, Oberbügermeister (Senior District Mayor) of Poniatowec
in the Warthegau 1941/2; Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs in Polen (Hans Frank
Diaries), Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels (Goebbels Diaries); [Diensttagebuch Himmler] Der Dienstkalender
Heinrich Himmler 1941/2. These are rich sources, indeed.
The diary of Dr Hans Frank's Diary, Tagebuch des Herrn Generalgouverneurs für die Besetzten Polnischen
Gebiete, 25 Oktober 1939 bis 3. April 1945 is crucial for understanding the power struggle within the General
Government between Himmler, Frank and Krüger. The original 'Frank Diaries' can be found in the archives of the
former Archiwum Glownej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce (Main Commission for Investigation
of Nazi Crimes in Poland), today the Izba Pamiêci Narodowej (Institute of National Memory) in Warsaw, Poland.
The Tagebuch is a detailed although not personal record of the civil administration divided into 38 volumes. The
diary is compartmentalized according to subject matter--agriculture, labor, security, etc. There is an abridged
English translation of this work (Hans Frank's Diary, Pañstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warsaw 1961). See
also: International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major German War Criminals (42 volumes); Vol. XX1X, Document
Number 2233-PS, 356-725 contains material from the Tagebuch.
For the purposes of this study the author has been selective when quoting the Tagebuch, usually citing secondary
sources as indicated, where appropriate. The main source of material used in this study is Larry V.
Thompson, Nazi Administrative Conflict: The Struggle for Executive Power in the General Government of Poland,
1939-1945 (unpublished thesis), University of Wisconsin, USA, 1967. Importance is attributed to this work
because the central theme focuses on the personal and institutional conflict, or SS & Police v Gouveneur, General
Government, Poland 1941-1943. See also Robert L. Koehl, German Resettlement and Population Policy, 1939 –
1945, Cambridge (HUP) 1957.
More recent material concerning the Frank Diaries can be seen at the Deutsches Historisches Institute (German
Historical Institute) in London, under references SH 5/9030 and SH 2/149. Other recent publications deal with
the subject or parts thereof from different viewpoints. When placed in context, Browning's Ordinary Men (1991),
together with Goldhagen's Willing Executioners, deal controversially with events outside Reinhardt that have no
direct bearing on events within the death camps. Browning's thesis suggests a mundane perspective of the Nazi
decimation of the Jews, explaining how ordinary men, once engaged in unbridled mass killing, went about their
task with diligence and efficiency. The Reinhardt personnel were also no less ordinary and they, too, took on the
role of executioners in T4, and then, in a far more deadly environment, became the principals in a brutal
industrialized genocide. What we have, therefore, are 'ordinary men' outside Reinhardt, committing mass
murders but with the protection of the Reich Security Main Office Executive with the choice of being engaged or
not in mass killings. Conversely, within Reinhardt, these 'ordinary men' had no protection, right of appeal, or
choice of withdrawing from the slaughter. They were ruthlessly driven in their terrible mission by an untouchable,
heartless police leadership, which acted on orders from the highest authority whose purpose was the complete
extermination of Jewry. One particular aspect that will be discussed is the scholarly consensus that perpetrators
had the choice of refusing to obey an order to kill. This contention is largely supported and underpinned by
judicial pronouncements by SS courts and in subsequent post-war criminal trials. It will be argued that these
conclusions do not hold with regard to Reinhardt.
Another important contribution to be assessed here is the only published account of the Belzec death camp by
a Jewish survivor, Rudolf Reder's Belzec. Reder's account, recently translated, has been liberally used by
historians simply because it is the 'only' comprehensive record by one of two sole victims who escaped and
survived the camp.
Oddly, no major German scholarship, although represented elsewhere, has emerged about Belzec per se.
Although the euthanasia program in general has been well documented, especially from the medical aspect
(Klee, Burleigh, Friedlander, Platten-Hallermund, Mitscherlich and Mielke, et al.), it is worth bringing into
perspective its relevance to Reinhardt. The mechanics and principles of euthanasia were to emerge finally as the
answer to fulfilling the Nazi genocidal policies. Mass shootings had been ruled out due to the enormous numbers
of victims involved, its impracticality, and the adverse psychological on the executioners. There was the
additional factor that secrecy could not be guaranteed. The methods and technical advances of the euthanasia
program as the precursor to genocide are noted.
The central issue discussed in this reappraisal is the focus on the middle and lower echelons of recruits to the
euthanasia program and their subsequent transfer to Reinhardt. Henry Friedlander in Origins of Nazi
Genocide pursues a similar line of enquiry but he restricts his research to the opening phase of T4, whereas this
enquiry is a more robust and comprehensive analysis. More extensive treatment of the psychiatric institutions
has been explored in Michael Burleigh's Death and Deliverance: 'Euthanasia' in Germany 1900-1945, Ernst
Klee's Euthanasie im NS-Staat: Die Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens, and more recently in Patricia
Heberer's Targeting the Unfit and 'Exitus Heute' in Hadamar. See also, Conference paper, Lublin, 8 November
2002: A Continuity in Killing Operations: T4 Perpetrators and Aktion Reinhard
A new generation of German scholars has emerged and continues to emerge-- Götz Aly, Peter Chroust, Christian
Pross, et al, who are penetrating and opening up past Nazi medical crimes and forcing a certain amount of soul-
searching by the present day medical establishment in Germany. For a useful background to the psychiatric
institutions during the Nazi period, see Bronwyn McFarland-Icke's Nurses in Nazi Germany. Gitta Sereny's Into
the Darkness: The Mind of a Mass Murderer (personal interviews with Franz Stangl), is an extraordinary exposure
of the Nazi system and genocidal policies in Reinhardt. Regarding archival material, the voluminous files relating
to perpetrators prosecuted for the crimes committed during the euthanasia and Reinhardt operations are of the
utmost importance.
Exploring the literature relating to events during and after the euthanasia (T4) period is vital for an understanding
of Reinhardt. Attention has again focused on the new generation of German scholars-- Dieter Pohl, Götz
Aly,Thomas Sandküler, Peter Longerich, Karen Orth, Ulrich Herbert, Peter Witte, and Bogdan Musial, to name
but a few-- who have directed their research in a wide-ranging re-assessment of the circumstances surrounding
the Final Solution. The Nazi crimes committed in Galicia in particular have attracted a lively and wide divergence