Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka

The Operation Reinhard Death Camps

Plot

Between the years 1942 and 1943, under the code name Operation Reinhard, more than one-and-a-half million Jews were gassed in the concentration camps of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, located in Nazi-occupied Poland. Fewer than 200 Jews survived the operation. Using sources previously overlooked, such as German and Polish official records and testimonies from Nazi war crimes trials, Yitzhak Arad records the complete history of the death camps from their construction in 1941 to their destruction in 1943. He tells the tale of the death camps' inmates -- though many lived only a few hours after their arrival -- the underground organizations, the revolts and escapes, and the details concerning the day-to-day survival of those spared instant death in the gas chambers. Arad's work retrieves the experience of Operation Reinhard's victims and survivors from obscurity and bears eloquent witness to their tragedy.