Special department deployment R

The special department Einsatz R (R stands for Reinhardt ), also known as Einsatz R , Aktion R or Department R , was an independent department of the SS and police apparatus in the Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone . She was subordinate to the " Higher SS and Police Leader " Odilo Globocnik , who had his official seat in Trieste .

Emergence

In the course of the termination of Aktion Reinhardt , Globocnik was transferred to Trieste in the Adriatic coastal area in mid-September 1943. With him came personnel from his previous service as SS and police leaders in Lublin . Of these 16 SS men, some like Georg Michalsen from Hermann Höfles report, Globocnik's adjutant Ernst Lerch and Johannes Schwarzenbacher were directly involved in Aktion Reinhardt. Six other "T4 Reinhardt men", namely Christian Wirth , Josef Oberhauser , Franz Stangl , Konrad Geng, Otto Stadie and Rudolf Baer were also among the first employees.

Only after the Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps of Aktion Reinhardt had been dissolved and liquidated ( Belzec was dissolved in the spring of 1943) did the majority of Aktion Reinhardt personnel, 78 men, move to the Adriatic coastal area from the end of 1943 to January 1944. Like Aktion Reinhardt, the special department was attached to the office of the Higher SS and Police Leader, headed by Globocnik and was under the orders of Christian Wirth . After Wirth's death in May 1944, Gottlieb Hering briefly headed this special department until he was replaced by Dietrich Allers .

assignment

Analogous to Aktion Reinhardt, this special department, both programmatically and personally, had the task of deporting and exterminating Jews as well as confiscating Jewish property. Further tasks consisted in the pursuit of political opponents and increasingly in the fight against partisans . The commander as well as the commanders of the three units of this special department were all camp commanders of the extermination camps of Aktion Reinhardt, such as Wirth (Belzec), Hering (Belzec), Stangl (Treblinka) and Reichleitner (Sobibor). Up to 5000 Jewish prisoners and partisans were murdered in the Risiera di San Sabba concentration camp near Trieste, a former rice mill. From Trieste alone, 837 Jews were deported to Auschwitz in several transports .

organization

unit	commander	Change of personnel	particularities
RI Trieste	Gottlieb Hering	After Wirth's death, Josef Oberhauser represented Hering from spring to July 1944	The Risiera di San Sabba concentration camp near Trieste also fell under the jurisdiction of this unit
R II Fiume	Franz Reichleitner	After Reichleitner's death on January 3, 1944, Franz Stangl until May / June 1944
R III Udine	Franz Stangl	after Stangl's change to R II Fritz Küttner, then from mid-1944 Paul Arthur Walther, most recently Helmut Fischer	with branch office Castelnuovo d'Istria
R IV Mestre	Franz Stangl since mid-1944 - November 1944		with branch in Venice

End of war

The special department R remained essentially intact until the end of the war, apart from the war-related failures. Only five men switched to the fighting troops prematurely - at their own request, due to a punitive transfer or difficulties with Dietrich Allers.

As the war was approaching, the units of the special department withdrew in groups from northern Italy to Germany at the end of April 1945. Most of the members of unit R III were interned in the American camp Habach near Weilheim in Upper Bavaria . Another group ended up in the American prison camp in Bad Aibling . Other members were initially captured by the English and transferred to the American POW camp in Aalen .

Most of the members of the special department were released from the camps after a brief internment. Occasionally they decided to flee abroad when investigative proceedings were imminent; a few went into hiding under different names, but most of them lived unchallenged in post-war society for a long time . The first West German trials at the end of 1949 were directed against four perpetrators who had been identified by chance. Large trials against the perpetrators of Aktion Reinhardt did not take place until the mid-1960s.

literature

René Moehrle: Persecution of Jews in Trieste during Fascism and National Socialism 1922–1945 . Metropol, Berlin 2014 ISBN 978-3-86331-195-7 , pp. 331–386.
Michael Wedekind: National Socialist Occupation and Annexation Policy in Northern Italy 1943 to 1945. The operational zones “Alpine Foreland” and “Adriatic Coastal Land” (= Military History Studies 38). Published by the Military History Research Office . R. Oldenbourg Verlag , Munich 2003, ISBN 3-486-56650-4 (also: Münster, Univ., Diss., 1996).
Ernst Klee : What they did - what they became. Doctors, lawyers and others involved in the murder of the sick or Jews (= Fischer-Taschenbücher 4364). Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-596-24364-5 .
Franciszek Piper : The number of victims of Auschwitz. Based on the sources and the results of research from 1945 to 1990. State Museum Publishing House, Oświęcim 1993, ISBN 83-85047-17-4 .

Individual evidence

^ Sara Berger: Experts of the destruction. The T4 Reinhardt network in the Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka camps. Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-86854-268-4 , p. 278.
↑ According to Berger, all information on this is “unclear” - Sara Berger: Experts of Destruction ... Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-86854-268-4 , p. 281.
^ Sara Berger: Experts of the destruction. The T4 Reinhardt network in the Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka camps. Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-86854-268-4 , p. 282.

[1] Sara Berger: Experts of the destruction. The T4 Reinhardt network in the Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka camps. Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-86854-268-4 , p. 278.

[2] According to Berger, all information on this is “unclear” - Sara Berger: Experts of Destruction ... Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-86854-268-4 , p. 281.

[3] Sara Berger: Experts of the destruction. The T4 Reinhardt network in the Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka camps. Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-86854-268-4 , p. 282.