Nazi Germany used six extermination camps, also called death camps, or killing centers, in Central Europe, primarily Occupied Poland, during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million people – mostly Jews – in the Holocaust. The victims of death camps were primarily murdered by gassing, either in permanent installations constructed for this specific purpose, or by means of gas vans. The six extermination camps were Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Extermination through labour was also used at the Auschwitz and Majdanek death camps. Millions were also murdered in concentration camps, in the Aktion T4, or directly on site.
Walther Immanuel Funk was a German economist and Nazi official who served as Reich Minister for Economic Affairs (1938–1945) and president of Reichsbank (1939–1945). During his incumbency, he oversaw the mobilization of the German economy for rearmament and arrangement of forced labor in concentration camps. After the war he was tried and convicted as a major war criminal by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Sentenced to life in prison, he remained incarcerated until he was released on health grounds in 1957. He died three years later.
Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt was the codename of the secret German plan in World War II to exterminate Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied Poland. This deadliest phase of the Holocaust was marked by the introduction of extermination camps. The operation proceeded from March 1942 to November 1943; about 1.47 million or more Jews were murdered in just 100 days from late July to early November 1942, a rate which is approximately 83% higher than the commonly suggested figure for the kill rate in the Rwandan genocide. In the time frame of July to October 1942, the overall death toll, including all killings of Jews and not just Operation Reinhard, amounted to two million killed in those four months alone. It was the single fastest rate of genocidal killing in history.
Emil Johann Rudolf Puhl was a Nazi economist and banking official during World War II.
Much of the focus of the discussion about Nazi gold concerns how much of it Nazi Germany transferred to overseas banks during World War II. The Nazis looted the assets of their victims to accumulate wealth. In 1998, a Swiss commission estimated that the Swiss National Bank held $440 million of Nazi gold, over half of which is believed to have been looted.
Nazi plunder was organized stealing of art and other items which occurred as a result of the organized looting of European countries during the time of the Nazi Party in Germany.
The SS Main Economic and Administrative Office was a Nazi organization responsible for managing the finances, supply systems and business projects of the Allgemeine-SS. It also ran the concentration camps and was instrumental in the implementation of the Final Solution through such subsidiary offices as the Concentration Camps Inspectorate and SS camp guards.
Kurt Hubert Franz was an SS officer and one of the commanders of the Treblinka extermination camp. Because of this, Franz was one of the major perpetrators of genocide during the Holocaust. Sentenced to life imprisonment in the Treblinka Trials in 1965, he was eventually released in 1993.
The Grossaktion Warsaw was the Nazi code name for the deportation and mass murder of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto during the summer of 1942, beginning on 22 July. During the Grossaktion, Jews were terrorized in daily round-ups, marched through the ghetto, and assembled at the Umschlagplatz station square for what was called in the Nazi euphemistic jargon "resettlement to the East". From there, they were sent aboard overcrowded Holocaust trains to the extermination camp in Treblinka.
The August Frank memorandum of 26 September 1942 was a directive from SS Lieutenant General August Frank of the SS concentration camp administration department (SS-WVHA). The memorandum provides a measure of the detailed planning that Frank and other Nazis put into the carrying out of the Holocaust. It includes instructions as to the disposition of postage stamp collections and underwear of the murdered Jews. It is clear that the Nazis were intent in removing everything of value from their victims.
Franz Suchomel was a Sudeten German Nazi war criminal. He participated in the Action T4 euthanasia program, in Operation Reinhard, and the Einsatzgruppen actions in the Adriatic operational zone. He was convicted at the Treblinka trials in September 1965 and spent four years in prison.
Hans-Joachim Caesar was a German lawyer and banking official, working for the German Reichsbank from 1931 until the end of World War II. He was director of Germany's Reichsbank during World War II and basically served as "second-in-line" to Vice President Emil Puhl. From 1940 to 1944, Caesar served as German Banking Administrator/Comptroller ("Bankenkommissar") for France in Paris.
Hildebrand Gurlitt was a German art historian and art gallery director who dealt in Nazi-looted art as one of Hitler's and Goering's four authorized dealers for "degenerate art".
The Gurlitt Collection was a collection of around 1,500 art works inherited by Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of one of Hitler's official art dealers, Hildebrand Gurlitt (1895–1956), and which was found to have contained several artworks looted from Jews by the Nazis.
Rolf Nikolaus Cornelius Gurlitt was a German art collection owner. The son of Hildebrand Gurlitt, an art gallery director and Nazi-era dealer of looted art, Gurlitt inherited from his father a collection of over 1,400 artworks known as the Gurlitt trove or Gurlitt Collection, a small number of which were subsequently demonstrated to have been looted from Jews by Nazis. Upon its public discovery, the collection was impounded by the Augsburg Prosecutor's Office as evidence in a possible case for tax evasion that was never mounted; the works were not returned to Gurlitt's estate until after his death. In his will, Gurlitt left the entire collection, minus any works that turned out to be looted, to a lesser known gallery in Switzerland, the Museum of Fine Arts Bern, apparently in reaction over his perceived poor treatment by the German authorities.
SS-OberscharführerKarl Pötzinger (1908–1944) born in Leipzig, Germany, was a Holocaust perpetrator who began his World War II career as the Action T4 “burner” at the Brandenburg Euthanasia Centre and at the Bernburg Euthanasia Centre with the rank of Staff Sergeant in the SA. Pötzinger was a career policeman at the outbreak of war. He was transferred to Treblinka extermination camp at the onset of Operation Reinhard of 1942 along with other gassing specialists. Pötzinger became Deputy Commandant of Treblinka II under SS-Scharführer Heinrich Matthes, supervising the gas chambers and later, serving as head of the cremation command in the Totenlager as soon as the covering up Nazi crimes became paramount to the Nazi leadership notably to Heinrich Himmler himself during his visit to Treblinka in 1943.
Eberhard W. Kornfeld was a Swiss auctioneer, author, art dealer, and collector based in Bern.
The German Nazi Party looted and stole art, gold and other objects that had been either plundered or moved for safekeeping at various storage sites during World War II. These sites included salt mines at Altaussee and Merkers and a copper mine at Siegen.
Resettlement to the East was a Nazi euphemism which was used to refer to the deportation of Jews and others such as the Roma to extermination camps and other murder locations as part of the Final Solution. The Nazis used the euphemism as an attempt to fool their victims into thinking that they would be "resettled" somewhere else, usually in a labour camp, but not all of the victims believed the claim. The Germans also used the word "evacuation", implying preservation from danger and equally misleading to the victims. The Jews were granted a small luggage allowance, but the luggage was loaded separately, and it was often left at the station so it could be disposed of later, after the trains left. German Jews and their luggage were collected openly and in full view of the public before their transportation to the local railway station. To keep the lie credible, receipts were given, and the luggage was carried separately and collected from the victims after their murder.
