Beyond Ausschwitz
Understanding "Operation Reinhardt"

In the ghettos and camps of "Operation Reinhardt", at least 1.8 million Jews were murdered. Most of them were killed in the German extermination camps at Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka. Despite their central importance to the systematic annihilation of European Jews, these historical sites are scarcely known in public awareness.

The curated educational trips to the historical sites of “Operation Reinhardt” are aimed particularly at staff of the German Bundestag and senior employees of federal ministries. As supporters of Germany’s highest democratic institutions, participants bear a special responsibility: they help ensure that democratic institutions rest on a solid foundation of historical truth – especially in a time of increasing distortion of history and rising antisemitic incidents. The aim of the trips is therefore to expand knowledge of the Holocaust beyond the widely familiar context of Auschwitz.

During the four-day trips, participants visit Lublin, the administrative center of "Operation Reinhardt", the former ghettos of Izbica and Włodawa, the extermination camps of Bełżec and Sobibor, and the concentration and extermination complex of Majdanek. Historical briefings, on-site discussions, and reflection sessions deepen the understanding of how bureaucracy, logistics, and societal indifference enabled genocide – and what roles administration, police, judiciary, and the economy played. Learning at authentic sites reveals these mechanisms with a clarity that no traditional learning environment can provide. For civil servants and parliamentary staff, this knowledge forms an essential basis for responsible decision-making today.

The educational trips are conducted by What Matters, whose historians have extensive expertise in Holocaust education. Together with representatives of the WJC and the Alfred Landecker Foundation, they guide participants through each site, providing historical foundations, context, and space for deeper reflection.

Ronald S. Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress, says:

“Operation Reinhardt remains one of the most devastating and least understood chapters of the Holocaust. Millions were murdered in places that are not widely known, in camps built for the sole purpose of immediate extermination. By bringing senior German parliamentary and government staff to these sites, we are restoring historical truth, confronting distortion, and ensuring that the people who help shape democratic societies today understand exactly how quickly hatred becomes policy and how indifference becomes complicity. This history must never be forgotten.”

By combining the World Jewish Congress’s global expertise in Holocaust education and diplomacy with the Alfred Landecker Foundation’s focus on further developing a culture of remembrance and strengthening democratic resilience, the program brings together complementary strengths that are indispensable at this moment. Understanding how state structures were mobilized for exclusion and violence helps protect democratic institutions from contemporary antisemitism and conspiracy-driven narratives.

Lena Altman, Co-CEO of the Alfred Landecker Foundation, says:

“When participants walk these sites, they encounter layers of history that no document alone can convey. Operation Reinhardt was a centrally organized program that used a tightly coordinated network of ghettos, transports, and extermination camps to murder nearly two million Jews. Understanding this systematic machinery - and the role played by administrative structures - helps deepen a culture of remembrance, accountability, and responsibility within today’s democratic institutions.”

Alfred Landecker, the foundation’s namesake, was deported from Mannheim to Izbica in 1942. Izbica served the National Socialists as a transit ghetto – a kind of waiting room for death, from where prisoners were transported to the extermination camps of Sobibor, Bełżec, or Treblinka during the "Operation Reinhardt". Where exactly Alfred Landecker was killed within this system of deportation and mass murder cannot be determined with certainty.