80 years after the gas chamber: the “most evil Nazi” who created a gas chamber and the first victims arrived from Ukraine

Eighty years ago, a killing machine of this type was put into operation at the Beljek death camp. The first person to die was part of a Jewish contingent from the Ukrainian city of Lviv. The story of Odillo Globonic, author of the fearsome method. It's a terrible end. And the priest who denied his funeral was a priest who denied his funeral

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Germany's surrender took place almost a month ago. Nazi soldiers and officers escaped like rats across However, despite the vastness of the continent, there were not too many places to go. It was hunger and destruction. British patrols have found Nazi soldiers at the foot of the Alps. They tried to impersonate a peasant, but they didn't deceive anyone. When questioned already in the barracks, they confessed that they were members of the defeated army, but refused to occupy the relevant place The youngest gave advice to the arrests so that they could trust. Where they found them, at higher altitudes, deeper in the mountains, in a well-equipped hut , they were able to find an important Nazis. They didn't know their identities, but they knew they were important people because of the way they were dressed, how comfortable they were despite the circumstances, someone sent them to do their shopping. The British found the site without problems and arrested 7 people. Six of them dressed as officers, and the rest presented themselves as a great German merchant. He had a warm jacket, leather pants, and expensive boots. Arriving at the detachment, the other six were placed in the dungeon, and the merchant was free to move around the place. He was not a businessman until someone thought he recognized him. When he passed in front of him, he was already turning his back on a trap to determine his identity. With a slight German accent and an imposing voice, he said, “Globocnik! The short, overweight man turned his head as if answering a phone call. As soon as he realized the almost reflex act, he tried to continue as if nothing had happened. The British commander ordered that he be placed in the safest prison. They found someone in charge of the Nazi death camp. However, during the lockdown, Odilo Globocnik helped himself with his hands by putting something in his mouth with a quick movement and closing his jaws tightly. Almost immediately, he fell and shook to the ground. His skin turned purple. He asked for a cyanide pill.

Someone defined him as “the nastiest person in the most evil organization that ever existed.” A despicable being with a unique desire to kill. An inexhaustible killer appetite.Odilo Globocnik boasted that he was the Nazi who had eliminated the most Jews. It was he who was responsible for building and operating the death camps. Beljets, Sobibor and Treblinka.

Eighty years ago, on March 17, 1942, hundreds of Jews from Ukraine were admitted for the first time to the gas chambers of the Belzeg camp on Polish territory. Of course, they were not the first Jews to be killed by the Nazis, nor the first Jews to emit gas.However, there were people who started a new system, a system that completed a killing machine and a system that turned it into an industry.

Shoa has gone through a different stage. Suddenly, it was not a decision to build a camp to eliminate all members of the ethnic group. The annihilating decision existed before, and it intensified and expanded over time. However, the way in which this genocide plan was implemented varied.

In the face of every large-scale massacre, logistical and moral problems arose for the soldiers who committed the crime. The authorities were developing a plan to make these terrorist mechanisms more effective.

The Holocaust process was out of the ordinary. It was long and complicated. As some believe, one day Hitler woke up and gave an order to kill all members of various ethnic groups, and it did not happen that the plan went into effect. There were several stages. The great systematic massacre of the last years of World War II began much earlier, and politicians began to take increasingly radical, increasingly bloody, arbitrary and radical measures. According to the slogan of Nikolaus Wachsmann from KL, more than 600,000 Jews from Eastern Europe had already died when the death camp run by Globonic opened. History of Nazi concentration camps. Already in 1941, the Soviet invasion caused a large number of exiles and murders to try different solutions.

The most daring, immoral and ambitious person came to the rescue and put him at the forefront. In the second half of 1941, Himmler gave orders to Globocnik. It was a secret plan that they called Action Reinhardt, Operation Reinhardt. They will no longer build concentration camps or slave labor camps. It was time to give more examples. Death camps, places where people have been taken to be killed. They had very few staff; only 25 to 30 executives were able to maintain order and ensure that the various stages of the trip were respected. The rest of the dirty household chores were Sondercommandos . Prisoners had to place people in gas chambers, remove corpses, cremate and pile up their personal belongings. In most cases, these also die and are replaced by others.

People got on a crowded train. Cattle wagons unable to breathe due to overcrowding and bad smells.Many people did not get off alive. When they arrived, when the formation doors opened and transparent light and fresh air came in (or froze depending on the time of year), the prisoners thought the worst had happened. What they didn't know was that the choice had been made before they got on the train, and they were already doomed. Inside the camp, there was a station for newcomers. Normal pantomime and simulated routines reassured them. A place to drop off their belongings, a line to wait and a place to undress for a bath.With posters and fake watches, the resort wanted to show its hospitality. But after a few minutes, everyone would die. None of the people who got out of the car stayed alive for more than a few hours.

The Nazis tried to shoot the victims. It was a slow and morally costly procedure for soldiers who had to shoot hundreds of defenceless people, children, women and the elderly. They also built trucks to poison people who climbed into carbon dioxide. Then they were buried in mass graves, but because of the gas, the corpses came out to the surface.

Globocnik was a corrupt man who was cast as an official, but his audacity, lack of vigilance and closeness to Himmler gave him back his power. And he was ready to do whatever was necessary so as not to lose him. When he received the order to establish this camp, he told his subordinates: “The German SS Fuhrer has given us a new task. I am very grateful to be able to make sure that our wishes can come true immediately.”

It was he who coordinated and supervised the construction of the death camp. There was no crematory oven in Belzeg, but the gas chamber was not.The method chosen by Globocnik was the carbon dioxide method. His men killed thousands of Polish and Russian Jews every hour. After several months of operation, he gave the order to create a new gas chamber, into which 2000 people each entered. It is estimated that 600,000 Jews were killed in Belzeg alone.

When the train arrived crowded and traffic was interrupted, Globocnik demanded more. Deportation alone was not enough. He was complaining. He said they had a much greater death force. At one point, he confronts Rudolf Hoes, commander of Auschwitz.

Auschwitz was a slave labor camp, and it was a concentration camp that became one of the extermination camps with the addition of the Treblinka. However, this mixed nature has changed how it works. Höss and Globocnik fought openly in front of their superiors to admit who killed the most people. They accused each other of being inefficient and disorderly. Höss encouraged him to use Zyklon B, a gas that his rival killed in the Auschwitz hall.However, Globocnik still preferred carbon monoxide.

Globoknick killed more people by destroying the Polish ghetto. In 1943, Belzeg was the first death camp to be dismantled. They took the remains out of the pit and made a huge wood tree. They then built the facility on top of it to break and eliminate the evidence.

Globocnik and his men continued to move together until the end of the war. Next to him, they found him in the Alps. They traveled to Italy during the final months of the competition.

Decades after Globocnik's death, rumors circulated that he did not commit suicide. Rumor had it that everything was a parody staged by the United States that hid a genocide. It is well known that the great powers recruited Nazis during the post-war period and used them for their own purposes. These were mainly important scientists (for example von Braun) or intelligence agents with a wealth of information. However, Globocnik would not have been acceptable, and it would not have been justified at least. Some investigators claimed that the former commander of Belzek and Sobibor lived in the United States. They even used secret documents to prove it. At the beginning of the new millennium, the German journalist and writer Gitta Sereny proved that this is a groundless legend and that Odilo Globocnik committed suicide with Austrian cyanide pills.

Before we finish, we will return to May 31, 1945, the day of his death at the Parthenion Castle in Austria, where the British barracks were located. British soldiers moved their bodies to the village church, with a small cemetery in the background. The local parish priest declined when he knew who he wanted to ask. He said that the cemetery was a sacred place and that the dead who lived did not deserve company.

Odilo Globocnik was buried in an open field in front of the church walls without ritual.

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