Editing Extermination camp (section)

== Background ==
{{see also|Nisko Plan}}
{{image frame
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After the [[invasion of Poland]] in September 1939, the secret [[Aktion T4]] [[involuntary euthanasia|euthanasia]] programme{{snd}}the systematic murder of German, Austrian and Polish hospital patients with mental or physical disabilities authorized by [[Hitler]]{{snd}}was initiated by the ''[[Schutzstaffel|SS]]'' in order to eliminate "[[life unworthy of life]]" ({{langx|de|Lebensunwertes Leben}}), a Nazi designation for people who they considered to have no [[right to life]].<ref name="Burleigh">{{cite book |author=Michael Burleigh |year=1994 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ShU7AAAAIAAJ |title=Death and Deliverance: 'Euthanasia' in Germany, c. 1900 to 1945 |publisher=CUP Archive |isbn=0-521-47769-7}}</ref><ref name="Webb">{{cite web|url=http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/otwock.html |title=Otwock & the Zofiowka Sanatorium: A Refuge from Hell |last=Webb |first=Chris |year=2009 |url-status=live |publisher=Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team |via=Internet Archive |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110711142224/http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/otwock.html |archive-date=11 July 2011 }}</ref> In 1941, the experience gained in the secretive killing of these hospital patients led to the creation of extermination camps for the implementation of the Final Solution. By then, the [[Jews]] were already [[Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland|confined to new ghettos]] and interned in [[Nazi concentration camps]] along with other targeted groups, including Roma, and the Soviet [[Prisoner of war|POW]]s. The Nazi's so-called "[[Final Solution of the Jewish Question]]", based on the systematic murder of Europe's Jews by gassing, began during [[Operation Reinhard]],<ref name="YV-Reinhard-pdf">{{cite web |url=http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%205724.pdf |title=Aktion Reinhard |publisher=Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies |year=2013 |access-date=15 September 2015 |author=Yad Vashem |id=Document size 33.1 KB |archive-date=15 December 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171215130625/http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205724.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref> after the June 1941 onset of the Nazi–Soviet war. The adoption of the gassing technology by Nazi Germany was preceded by a wave of hands-on killings carried out by the SS {{lang|de|[[Einsatzgruppen]]}},<ref name="Longerich185">{{cite book |last=Longerich |first=Peter |author-link= Peter Longerich |title=Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews |year=2010 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford; New York |isbn=978-0-19-280436-5 |page=185}}</ref> who followed the {{lang|de|[[Wehrmacht]]}} army during [[Operation Barbarossa]] on the Eastern Front.<ref name="Friedländer">{{cite book |url=http://www2.dsu.nodak.edu/users/dmeier/28107437-Nazi-Germany-and-the-Jews-1933-1945-Abridged-Edition-2009-Malestrom.pdf |title=Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933–1945 |publisher=HarperCollins Publishers |date=February 2009 |first=Saul |last=Friedländer |pages=293–294 / 507 |isbn=978-0-06-177730-1 |edition=Abridged |author-link=Saul Friedländer |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180918142723/http://www2.dsu.nodak.edu/users/dmeier/28107437-Nazi-Germany-and-the-Jews-1933-1945-Abridged-Edition-2009-Malestrom.pdf |archive-date=18 September 2018 |url-status=dead }}</ref>{{efn|The development of homicidal [[Gas chamber#Germany|gas chambers]] is attributed by historians to [[Albert Widmann]], chief chemist of the German Criminal Police ([[Kripo]]).<ref name="Browning2007">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jHQdRHNdK44C |title=The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942 |publisher=U of Nebraska Press |date=2007 | access-date=16 September 2015 |first=Christopher R |last=Browning |pages=188–189 |isbn=978-0-8032-0392-1 |author-link=Christopher R. Browning }}</ref> The first gas van manufactured in Berlin, was used by the [[Herbert Lange|Lange Commando]] between 21 May and 8 June 1940 at the [[Soldau concentration camp]] in [[occupied Poland]], to kill 1,558 mental patients delivered from sanatoria.<ref>{{cite web |first=Aaron |last=Breitbart |publisher=The Simon Wiesenthal Center |location=Los Angeles |year=1997 |url=http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=394667 |title=Responses to Revisionist Arguments |access-date=14 January 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170403232419/http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=394667 |archive-date=3 April 2017 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/vans.html |title=The Development of the Gas-Van in the Murdering of the Jews |year=2006 |publisher=Jewish Virtual Library |access-date=20 April 2020}}</ref> Lange used his experience with exhaust gasses in setting up the [[Chełmno extermination camp]] thereafter.<ref name="Browning-1">{{cite book |title=Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp |year=2011 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4YJnsqPiP7QC&q=Soldau |publisher=W W Norton & Company |first=Christopher R |last=Browning |pages=53–54 |isbn=978-0393338874 }}</ref> Widmann conducted first gassing experiments in the East in September 1941 in [[Mogilev]], and successfully initiated the killing of local hospital patients with the exhaust fumes from a truck engine, minimizing the psychological impact of the crime on the {{lang|de|Einsatzgruppe}}.{{sfn|Rees|2006|pages=53, 148}} }}

The camps designed specifically for the mass gassings of Jews were established in the months following the [[Wannsee Conference]] chaired by [[Reinhard Heydrich]] in January 1942 in which the principle was made clear that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated. Responsibility for the logistics was to be handled by the programme administrator, [[Adolf Eichmann]].<ref name="wannsee">{{cite web |url=https://prorevnews.wordpress.com/2014/06/30/minutes-of-the-wannsee-conference/ |title=Wannsee Protocol of January 20, 1942 |work=The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes. Vol. 11 |publisher=The official U.S. government translation |year=1945 |access-date=15 September 2015 |editor-first=John |editor-last=Mendelsohn }}</ref>

On 13 October 1941, the [[SS and Police Leader]] [[Odilo Globocnik]] stationed in [[Lublin reservation|Lublin]] received an oral order from {{lang|de|[[Reichsführer-SS]]}} [[Heinrich Himmler]]{{snd}}anticipating the [[Battle of Moscow|fall of Moscow]]{{snd}}to start immediate construction work on the killing centre at [[Bełżec extermination camp|Bełżec]] in the [[General Government]] territory of occupied Poland. Notably, the order preceded the Wannsee Conference by three months,<ref name="M/MPwB">{{citation |trans-title=Historia Niemieckiego Obozu Zagłady w Bełżcu |title=History of the Belzec extermination camp |publisher=Muzeum – Miejsce Pamięci w Bełżcu (National Bełżec Museum & Monument of Martyrdom) |url=http://www.belzec.eu/articles.php?acid=77 |language=pl |access-date=15 September 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151029003413/http://www.belzec.eu/articles.php?acid=77 |archive-date=29 October 2015 }}</ref> but the gassings at [[Chełmno extermination camp|Chełmno]] north of [[Łódź]] using [[Nazi gas van|gas van]]s began already in December, under {{lang|de|Sturmbannführer}} [[Herbert Lange]].<ref name="Browning2011">{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4YJnsqPiP7QC&q=Chelmno+death+camp | title=Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp | publisher=W. W. Norton & Company | date=2011b | access-date=28 June 2015 | author=Christopher R. Browning | pages=54, 65 | isbn=978-0-393-33887-4| author-link=Christopher R. Browning }}</ref> The camp at Bełżec was operational by March 1942, with leadership brought in from Germany under the guise of {{lang|de|italic=no|[[Organisation Todt]]}}&nbsp;(OT).<ref name="M/MPwB"/> By mid-1942, two more death camps had been built on Polish lands for Operation Reinhard: [[Sobibór extermination camp|Sobibór]] (ready in May 1942) under the command of {{lang|de|Hauptsturmführer}} [[Franz Stangl]], and [[Treblinka]] (operational by July 1942) under {{lang|de|Obersturmführer}} [[Irmfried Eberl]] from T4, the only doctor to have served in such a capacity.<ref name="JVL-Reinhard">{{cite web |url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/reinhard.html#5 |title=The Construction of the Treblinka Extermination Camp |publisher=Jewish Virtual Library.org |work=Yad Vashem Studies, XVI |year=1984 |access-date=15 September 2015 |author=Kenneth McVay }} Also in: {{cite journal |url=http://www.ima.org.il/FilesUpload/IMAJ/0/41/20631.pdf |title=Dr Irmfried Eberl (1910–1948): mass murdering MD |publisher=IMAJ |volume=11 |pages=216–218 |date=April 2009 |first=Rael D |last=Strous MD |journal=The Israel Medical Association Journal |issue=4 |pmid=19603594 |access-date=6 October 2015}}</ref> [[Auschwitz concentration camp]] was fitted with brand new gas chambers in March 1942.{{sfn|Rees|2006|pages=96–97}} [[Majdanek concentration camp|Majdanek]] had them built in September.<ref name="Sereny135">{{cite book |last=Sereny |first=Gitta |author-link=Gitta Sereny |title=The Healing Wound: Experiences and Reflections on Germany 1938–1941 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/healingwoundexpe00sere/page/135 135–146] |publisher=Norton |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-393-04428-7 |url=https://archive.org/details/healingwoundexpe00sere/page/135 }}</ref>