The platform “Beyond Auschwitz: Places and History of the Holocaust in the Lublin District” brings renewed attention to the often-overlooked history of Operation Reinhard and aims to restore it to public memory.
Led by SS and Police Leader Odilo Globocnik, Operation Reinhard was carried out through deportation, forced labor, plunder, and systematic killing in a coordinated campaign against the Jewish population of the General Government in occupied Poland, with Lublin serving as its administrative center. Between March 1942 and November 1943, between 1.7 and 1.8 million Jewish women, men, and children were murdered within this framework.
Mapping the scale of Operation Reinhard
Two of the three dedicated killing centers, Bełżec and Sobibór, were located within the Lublin District itself, alongside the concentration and extermination complex of Majdanek and a wider network of transit ghettos, labor camps, and execution sites. Before the Holocaust, roughly 350,000 Jews lived in the region, sustaining centuries of religious, cultural, and communal life. Almost all of this Jewish life was destroyed.
Despite the scale of the murders, the history of Operation Reinhard remains far less present in public awareness than that of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The killing centers were designed for immediate extermination and left almost no survivors. The SS later dismantled the sites and tried to erase every trace of the crimes.
The new portal maps and documents sites across the Lublin District, including the transit ghettos of Izbica, Piaski, and Włodawa, and the killing centers of Bełżec, Sobibór, and Majdanek. By linking this history to specific towns, camps, fields, and forests, it shows where the crimes unfolded and makes their scale visible.
A joint initiative of Alfred Landecker Foundation and the World Jewish Congress
The online platform was developed as part of “Beyond Auschwitz: Understanding Operation Reinhard,” a joint initiative of the World Jewish Congress and the Alfred Landecker Foundation. The program brings senior staff from the German Bundestag and federal ministries to the historic sites connected to Operation Reinhard.
Following the program’s first visits, the new platform will support future participants as they prepare for their journeys and continue engaging with the history afterward. By making the history of Operation Reinhard accessible to participants, educators, students, and the wider public, the platform contributes to preserving the memory of one of the least understood chapters of the Holocaust.
For the Alfred Landecker Foundation, the project carries particular meaning: our namesake, Alfred Landecker, was deported in 1942 to the transit ghetto of Izbica, one of the central waystations to the killing centers of Operation Reinhard.
Access the portal here.