Figure 1.-- .

The NAZI camp system was extrenely diverse. Trawnnki was primarily a forced labor camp, bu wa also used in other ways. It was located by the village of Trawniki about 40 km southeast of Lublin in the General Governmnent. This was the area of German occupied Poland not annexed go the Reich. Here the SS hel\d slave workers for an industrial plant. The slave workers labored in terrible conditions on starvation rations. The first Trawniki camp was commanded was Hermann Hoefle who was replaced by Karl Streibl. Trawniki was established (July 1941) as a camp for Soviet civilians and prisoners of war (June 1942 to May 1944). It also served as a forced labor camp for Jews until they wre killed as part of Operation Reinhard. It was incorporated into the Majdanek concentration camp system (September 1943). The camp also began to be used used for training guards recruited from Soviet POWs (September 1941). They were known as 'Hiwi' from the German Hilfswilligen, mening "those willing to help. They were used in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union, including the Baltics and other areas seized by the Soviet Union under the terms of the NAZI-Soviet Non-Aggressiion Pact (1939-41). The Hiwi taining continued until the Red Army approached the camp (July 1944). SS and police officials inducted, processed, and trained some 2,500 auxiliary police usually used as guards (Wachmänner). They were also known as Trawniki men. The camp was thus an important cog in the German camp system and the Holocaust killing process. When the Wehrmcht smashed into the Soviet Union (June 1941), they found many people oposed to the Soviet regime. This was especialy the case in the Ukrine which had been brutalized by Stalin's NKVD. The Germans could have recruited large numbers of Ukranians to fight the Red Army. Hitler refused to do so. He wanted the Ukraine, but not the Ukranians who were Slavs. Generalplan Ost called for killing large numbers of Ukranians, driving many beyond the Urals, and using the survivors as slave labor for German colonists. This was hardly a people to arm even if most were not fully aware of the German intentions. The German POW camps where more than a million men were shuttled to were hell holes with out basic facilities or adequate food. Most POWS would not survive the first winter. There was an out for a few of these deperate people--work for the Germans. Hitler had prohibited forming combat units, but the SS needed camp guards. We are not sure what the SS screening process was. They were primarily interested in finding ethnic Germans--Volkdeutsch. The NKVD after the initial shock of Barbarossa, forcibly transported the Volkdeutsche to Central Asia or the Siberia Far East. There were, however, some in the Red Army. The German ethnicity was of course the primary reason for their selection. [Black, p. 315.] An added assett ws that they often spoke Ukrainian, Russian, Polish and other languages used in the occupied territories as well as some German. Often their German was not very good. The officers of the Trawnicki units were were Germans. Volksdeutsche were selected as squad commanders. [Arad, p. 22.] The many referencs to Ukranian guards in Holocaust sources suggest to us that a substantial number of these men were Ukranians and other sources confirm that they were mostly Ukranians. There were also Russians, Belarusians, Poles, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Tartars, Georgians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis chosen for service. The Trawniki men played amajor role in the NAZI Operation Reinhard action to destroy Polish Jews. While some Tartrs wereelctd, individuals with Asiatic features were not. They also served to supress the the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943). [Stroop] The overiding concern of the men who volunteered was to get out of the POW camps. Probbly most were anti-Soviet to various degrees. To what extent they hated Jews we are not sure. Anti-Semitism was prevalent in the Ukraine, but varied greatly among individuls. Himmler protege SS-Obergruppenführer Odilo Globocnik ws in charge ofthe cmps in the Lublin District of the General Government. He at first invisioned the Trawniki men as police fot the occupied Soviet Union. When Barbarossa failed, he saw that the Trawniki men would be useful as guards at the death camps and in other killing operations in Poland. Tghere ws animosity between the Poles and Ukranians so a Ukrabnian guard force was an elegant sollution for Globocnik.

Sources

Arad, Yitzak. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps (Indiana University Press, 1987).

Black, Peter. "Hand langer der EndLösung: Die Trawniki-Männer und die Aktion Reinhard 1941-1943," in Bogdan Musial, ed. Aktion Reinhardt, Der Völkermord an den Juden im Generalgouvernement 1941-01944 (Osnabrück: Fibre, 2004).

Procknow, Gregory. Recruiting and Training Genocidal Soldiers (Francis & Bernard Publishing, 2011).

Stroop, Jürgen. "The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw is no more" (July 1943). Stroop was the Waffen-SS commander who helped supress the Jewisgh uprising in the Wrsaw Ghetto. This was his report to Himmler. It is now commonly referred to as the Stroop report.

Created: 10:22 PM 9/6/2012
Last updated: 10:22 PM 9/6/2012