Was Chelmno a Ops. Reinhard

[Sergey Romanov]

1. Regarding Aktion Reinhard(t).

There is, of course, zero evidence that AR was named after FR. Not a single shred of documentary or testimonial evidence seems to exist for this hypothesis.

One might argue that there is no such evidence for AR being named after Heydrich.

However, first of all, we know that Heydrich's name was spelled both "Reinhardt" and "Reinhard".

There is no evidence that FR's surname was ever spelled "Reinhard".

In numerous documents AR is spelled "Aktion Reinhard". That excludes Reinhardt as a sole source of the name outright.

So even if there was no positive evidence for Heydrich as a source of the name, we could arrive at this conlusion by merely excluding FR.

Also, there is a piece of testimonial evidence, namely, SS-Ostubaf Karl Ernst Moeckel's testimony in Polish captivity. Moeckel was Leiter der Abteilung Verwaltung in Auschwitz, and knew in and outs of the "business". In his deposition of 07.07.47 he claims (Bertrand Perz und Thomas Sandkuehler, "Auschwitz und die "Aktion Reinhard" 1942-45. Judenmord und Raubpraxis in neuer Sicht", in: Zeitgeschichte 5, 26. Jg., 1999, S. 303):

Bei Aufnahme der Dienstgeschaefte in Auschwitz bestand bei der Haeftlingsgeldverwaltung eine Abteilung: "Verwertung beschlagnahmten juedischen Eigentums aus Aktion "R". Mein Vorgaenger erklaerte heirzu, dass die Aktion "Reinhard" hiesse, nach dem Vornamen des frueheren Chefs der Gestapo Heydrich und angekommene Judentransporte betroffen hatte.

All this said, I don't see why it's not possible that, as time went by, "Aktion Reinhardt" became an allusion to both Heydrich and Fritz. This, however, is a mere conjecture, and in any case Heydrich is the "main" source for the name.

2. There seems to be no evidence linking Chelmno to AR except the report about Paul Blobel building "Feldoefen Aktion Reinhard" there, but the name of these experimental "ovens" doesn't prove that Chelmno itself was part of AR as a killing operation. It is possible, of course, that the belongings of Jews murdered in Chelmno were acquired under AR auspices, but that in itself doesn't make Chelmno an AR camp. Conventionally, AR camp is a camp in which Jews were murdered in the course of AR proper, and, according to the Hoefle telegram, these camps were Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor and Lublin (Majdanek). If Chelmno was an AR camp, it would probably be included in the telegram.

There is, however, some uncertainty regarding this. It seems that Bunker 2 at Auschwitz was named (at least once) "Station 2 der Aktion Reinhard". While that wouldn't necessarily make Auschwitz into an AR camp, it seems to indicate that AR killings might have been going on in the camps not listed in the Hoefle telegram...

[gspaulsson]

Whoa. Chelmno started operations in December 1941, well before Aktion Reinhardt was a gleam in anyone's eye and before the Wannsee conference. It was set up at the request of Arthur Greiser, the Gauleiter and Reichskommissar of the Wartheland, using gas vans supplied by the Technical Referat of the SS which also supplied these vans for the Euthanasia programme (T-4) and Wehrmacht killing operations in Serbia (Semlin). One of them also eventually found its way to Auschwitz, where it replaced firing squads as the method of execution. Gassing operations using Zyklon-B had already started sooner at Auschwitz, on Soviet POWs, maybe as early as August 1941. The two operations were entirely separate. Operation Reinhardt did not get under way until the spring of 1942. It was named in memory of Reinhardt Heydrich (who spelt his name with a t, and was assassinated in May 1942.) It was headed by Globocnik, headquartered at Majdanek, and staffed by T-4 personnel led by Christian Wirth - still officially seconded to T-4 headed by Bouhler, under the Reichskanzlerei, and thus directly responsible to Hitler. Its purpose was the extermination of the Jews of the General Gouvernement, and it consisted of the camps at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. These camps continued to operate until November 1943, using carbon monoxide generated by stationary motors as the killing agent (T-4 had used botteld CO). They were shut down after prisoner revolts in Treblinka and Sobibor, having served their purpose. Auschwitz, in the meantime, started killing Jews on a modest scale in the spring of 1942 using the gas chamber at Auschwitz I, then transferred the killing operations to two abandoned peasant cottages at Auschwitz II - Birkenau. The large, purpose-built gas chamber/crematorium complexes at Birkenau did not start operating until the spring of 1943. At Auschwitz, all killing was done by Zyklon-B throughout. So you had actually six administratively distinct killing operations, under different command structures: T-4, under Bouhler under Hitler using bottled CO and later gas vans; Chelmno, operated by the WVHA but under Greiser's control, using gas vans; Semlin, under Wehrmacht control, using gas vans; Maly Trostenets in Belarus using (I believe) CO piped into a stationary gas chamber by a truck engine, and under Wehrmacht control; Auschwitz, under the WVHA, using Zyklon-B; and Operation Reinhardt, using CO generated by stationary tank or submarine engines (accounts differ), effectively under Wirth, with Globocnik handling the economic aspects of it under the WVHA.

Allles klar?

The best source for all this continues to be Hilberg.

[Sergey Romanov]

Auschwitz, in the meantime, started killing Jews on a modest scale in the spring of 1942 using the gas chamber at Auschwitz I

Hans Stark testified about Krema I killings of Jewish families beginning in October 1941.

Maly Trostenets in Belarus using (I believe) CO piped into a stationary gas chamber by a truck engine

Actually, gas vans, IIRC.

and Operation Reinhardt, using CO generated by stationary tank or submarine engines (accounts differ)

There is no credible evidence that submarine engines were used. Eichmann told about an alleged submarine engine in one of Wirth's experimental gassing sites, but that was only from Wirth's alleged words, Eichmann never said that the site was Belzec and there are good reasons to think that the site was not Belzec (cf. Browning's arguments).

There is also no reason to think that the engines were necessarily tank ones (if not submarine). At least one engine was probably from a Soviet tank (the one installed by Erich Fuchs in Sobibor). But all others could be of any type, e.g. tractor engines.

[michael mills]

It was named in memory of Reinhardt Heydrich (who spelt his name with a t, and was assassinated in May 1942.)

It is unproved that Heydrich ever spelt his given name as "Reinhardt", and it is unlikely that he ever did so.

He was christened Reinhard Tristan Eugen, and was given those names by his father, Bruno, after specific characters. "Reinhard" was the name of the main character in Bruno Heydrich's opera "Amen", and surviving scores of the opera show that spelling. "Tristan" was the name of a Wagner character, and "Eugen" that of a famous Austrian genral of the 17th century.

The spelling "Reinhardt" that appears in Heydrich's SS file must have originated as a spelling mistake by some quasi-literate clerk, that was then copied.

Himmler's comment at Heydrich's funeral, to the effect that the latter spelt his given name with a "dt", most probably was prompted by the former's sighting of that spelling in the file. It is likely that Himmler called for the file so as to get some background detail on Heydrich's life for the funerary speech that he was preparing, noticed the aberrant spelling that appeared in the file, and felt moved to comment on it.

In summary, it is unlikely that Heydrich himself ever spelt his name other than as "Reinhard", which is the normal form of that name as a given name, and it is almost certain that his colleagues in the RSHA, those who knew him best, were totally aware of the correct spelling.

If Aktion Reinhardt was indeed officially named after Heydrich, then the spelling "Einsatz Reinhard", which appears in some early documents, almost all originating in Globocnik's office in Lublin, show that Globocnik and his men knew the correct spelling of Heydrich's given name. That being so, it is very odd that in a short time the incorrect spelling "Reinhardt" came to be universally used in documents, and also on the official stamp kept in Globocnik's office. Why would Globocnik have felt constrained to start using an incorrect spelling of Heydrich's name, when it is apparent that he knew the correct one?

It is also noteworthy that there is nowhere (so far as I know) any record of an official mention that actions against Jews had been named in honour of Heydrich. For example, one might have expected that Himmler, in his laudatory speech at Heydrich's funeral, might have said that Heydrich had led the battle against the Jews, and that therefore the anti-Jewish actions would be named for him (even if Himmler would not have spoken of extermination at such a public venue, he could still have spoken of "protective measures" against the Jews, or some similar euphemism). But he did not.

Neither was there subsequently ever any official announcement that, since Heydrich had been in command of the fight against the Jews, that fight would now be named in his honour.

[Sergey Romanov]

It is unproved that Heydrich ever spelt his given name as "Reinhardt", and it is unlikely that he ever did so.

Mills tries to mislead the readers by throwing forth a red herring. Even if Heydrich himself never spelled his name like this, that still wouldn't change the simple fact that his name in numerous official documents (not only the SS file) was spelled with 't'.

http://death-camps.org/reinhard/action%20reinhard.html

Therefore, Heydrich's alleged personal spelling of his name without 't' has no relation whatsoever to the issue at hand. So why did Mills bring it up in the first place, if not to obfuscate?

Mills failed to address the facts and logic of my posting at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 91#1112191

Thus, AR's naming after Heydrich remains a simple fact.

[KarmaTiger]

"Reinhard Heydrich was born on 7 March 1904 in the German town Halle, and baptized Reinhardt Eugen Tristan. It was his given name of "Reinhardt" that would become synonymous (besides Auschwitz) with the deportation, mass shooting and systematic slaughter of European Jews and Romanies in Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Majdanek.

...As a teen he was plagued by rumours of Jewish ancestry that allegedly stemmed from his fathers bloodline. These rumours continued on through his adult life resulting in an investigation ordered by Gregor Strasser in 1932, at the instigation of Rudolf Jordan, the Gauleiter of Halle-Merseburg. A report was submitted to the information office of the NSDAP center in München (Munich). However, it dealt only with the parental line, since Jordan's suspicions were based primarily on the fact that the father, Bruno Heydrich, was described in Riemann's musical encyclopedia of 1916 as "Heydrich, Bruno, real name Süss". The report came to the conclusion that the name "Süss" was not incriminating and that Bruno Heydrich's son was free from any "Jewish blood".

There have been theories of Jewish ancestry also originating on his mother’s side but no conclusive evidence supporting these theories has thus surfaced. Martin Bormann's personal file on Heydrich, which included his family tree, has been preserved. This family tree goes back only one generation on his mother's side and omits the name, parentage and place of origin of his grandmother. Heydrich changed his first name into "Reinhard" and tried to avoid writing his name with a "t" when he started his career as a major SS-officer."

[michael mills]

"Reinhard Heydrich was born on 7 March 1904 in the German town Halle, and baptized Reinhardt Eugen Tristan. It was his given name of "Reinhardt" that would become synonymous (besides Auschwitz) with the deportation, mass shooting and systematic slaughter of European Jews and Romanies in Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Majdanek.

Is there any doucmentary evidence for the claim that Heydrich received the name "Reinhardt" at baptism? For example, has anyone sighted his baptismal certificate?

The standard biographies of Heydrich state that he was given the name "Reinhard" after a character in his father's opera, and that character was certainly "Reinhard", as is demonstrated by surviving scores of that work.

If the information in the standard biographies is correct, then Heydrich's given name was spelt "Reinhard" from the very beginning, and the version "Reinhardt" found in his SS file must represent a spelling mistake that was copied.

Heydrich changed his first name into "Reinhard" and tried to avoid writing his name with a "t" when he started his career as a major SS-officer.

If the standard biographies are correct in what they say about why Heydrich was given the name "Reinhard", then the above statement is historically incorrect. Heydrich did not change his given name, since that name had been "Reinhard" from the time of his baptism.

In that case, what Heydrich was trying to do was to eliminate the incorrect spelling of his name from the SS records, ie to have the correct spelling of his name recorded.

The evidence shows that Heydrich certainly did not want his given name to be spelt "Reinhardt", as his efforts to have that spelling in his SS file corrected. That being so, it would have been a gross discourtesy to his memory to name an operation after him using an incorrect spelling of his name, one that he himself opposed.

We are asked to accept that in the middle of 1942, the correct version of Heydrich's given name, the one he himself desired, was used in documents, but was soon replaced by an incorrect version that was then used exclusively.

A more likely explanation is that the variant "Reinhard" appearing in a number of documents prepared in Globocnik's office (an in one orphan WVHA document) is a misspelling of the surname "Reinhardt", an incorrect variant that was quickly eliminated from official correspondence once the error was noticed.

[Sergey Romanov]

Michael Mills again uses bad logic to avoid the real issues:

That being so, it would have been a gross discourtesy to his memory to name an operation after him using an incorrect spelling of his name, one that he himself opposed.

Only if the ones writing the name of the operation with a 't' knew about these issues at all, or cared about them at the time of writing.

Michael Mills still failed to address the arguments and logic at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 91#1112191

We know that Aktion Reinhard(t) was not named after Fritz Reinhardt (whose surname could not have been written as "Reinhard"), therefore it was named after Reinhard(t) Heydrich, whose name could have been written both ways. And there is a credible testimonial and circumstantial evidence for this conclusion. There is neither testimonial, nor circumstantial evidence for Aktion Reinhard(t) having been named after Fritz Reinhardt.

[Alan Heath]

My own view is that this name is purely a coincidence. I seem to get the impression that the name Reinhardt is being suggested as being the motive for the killing operation. So if robbery only is the case then why attack the Jews which in eastern Europe were part of the poverty stricken masses and not attack for example the aristocracy or something similar.
Whereas it is true Nazi Germany went into grandiose names of the person commanding the operation of in honour of him (Todt for example), I think Reinhardt is just a name picked at random. It is not as if Barbarossa where a plan devised by the emperor now dead for several hundred years or the invasion of Sicily being commanded by an Arctic canine!

[Ian Hulley]

Re the spelling of Heydrich's given name, the SS itself was reasonably certain how it was spelled officially :-