The surrender of Germany took place almost a month ago. Nazi soldiers and officers escaped like rats across Europe. However, despite the vastness of the continent, there were not too many places to go. All were hunger and destruction. British patrols found Nazi soldiers at the foot of the Alps. They tried to impersonate a peasant, but they did not 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 tips to the arrests so they could trust.Where they found them, at higher altitudes, deeper in the mountains, In a well-equipped cabin, they were able to find a prominent Nazis. They did not know their identity, but they knew that they were important people because of the way they were dressed, their comfort despite the circumstances, someone sent them to bring groceries. The British found the site without problems and arrested 7 people. Six of them dressed as officers, and the rest introduced himself as a major German merchant. He had a warm jacket, leather pants, and expensive boots. Upon arriving at the detachment, the other six were placed in the dungeon, and the merchant was free to move around the place.It wasn't a businessman until someone thought he recognized him.The man was a murderer. 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 a commanding voice, he said, “Globocnik!” The short, overweight man turned his head as if he was 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 him to be placed in the safest prison. They found someone in charge of the Nazi death camp. However, during confinement, 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 most evil 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 eliminated the most Jews.He was the one who was responsible for building and operating death camps. Beljets, Sobibor, and Treblinka.
80 years ago, on March 17, 1942, hundreds of Jews from Ukraine were admitted for the first time in the gas chambers of the Belzeg camp in Polish territory. Of course, they were not the first Jews to be killed by the Nazis, nor were they 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 had a different stage. In each of them, the Nazis gave the murderous profession greater complexity and effectiveness.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 ways 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 devising 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 issued an order to kill all members of various ethnic groups, and it did not happen that the plan came into force. There were several stages. The great and systematized massacre of the last years of World War II began much earlier, and policies began increasingly radical, increasingly bloody, arbitrary and radical actions. According to the slogan ibof Nikolaus Wachsmann of KL, more than 600,000 Jews from Eastern Europe had already died when the Globonic-operated death camp was opened. History of Nazi concentration camps. Already in 1941, the Soviet invasion caused a huge number of exiles and murders to try different solutions.
The most daring, most immoral and ambitious person came to the rescue and put him in the front row. In the second half of 1941, Himmler issued orders to Globocnik. It was a secret plan that they called Action Reinhardt, Operation Reinhardt. They will no longer build concentration camps and slave labor camps. It was time for more examples. Death camps, places where people were taken to be killed. They had very little manpower; only 25 to 30 executives were able to maintain order and ensure that the different stages of the journey were met. The rest of the dirty housework was Sondercommandos . Prisoners had to put people in gas chambers, remove corpses, put cremation, and stack belongings. In most cases, these also die and are replaced by others.
People got on a crowded train. Cattle wagons that were unable to breathe due to overcrowding and bad odour.Many people did not come down alive. When they arrived, when the doors of formation opened and transparent light and fresh air came in (or froze depending on the time of year), the prisoners believed that the worst happened. What they didn't know was that the choice was made before boarding the train.And they were already doomed. Inside the camp there was a station for newcomers. The normal pantomime and simulated routines reassured them. A place to leave their belongings, a line to wait, and a place to take off their clothes for a bath.With posters and fake watches, the station wanted to show hospitality. But after a few minutes everyone would die. None of the people who got out of the car were alive there for more than a few hours.
The Nazis attempted to shoot the victims. It was a slow and morally costly procedure for soldiers who had to shoot hundreds of necks of defenseless 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 a civil servant, but his audacity, lack of vigilance, and closeness with Himmler restored his power.And he was willing to do everything necessary not to lose it. When he was ordered to create this camp, he told his subordinates: “The German Führer of SS has given us a new task. I am very grateful to be able to be sure that our wishes can come true immediately.”
He was the one who coordinated and supervised the construction of the death camp. There was no crematorium oven in Belzeg, but the gas chamber was not.The method Globocnik chose was the method of carbon dioxide. His men killed thousands of Polish and Russian Jews every hour. After several months of operation, he issued an order to create a new gas chamber, in which 2000 people entered each. It is estimated that 600,000 Jews were killed in Belzeg alone.
When the train arrived crowded and traffic was interrupted, Globocnik demanded more. The deportation alone was not enough.He was complaining. He said they had a much larger killing force. At some point, he confronted Rudolf Hoes, commander of Auschwitz.
Auschwitz was a slave labor camp, and it was a concentration camp that became one of the extermination with the addition of the Treblinka. However, this mixed nature changed its operation. 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 untidy. Höss induced him to use Zyklon B, a gas that his rival killed in the Auschwitz room.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 pulled out the remains from the pit and made a huge wood tree.They then built the facility on top of it to break down and clear 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 attended Italy during the last months of the contest.
Decades after the death of Globocnik, there were rumors that he did not commit suicide. It was rumored that everything was a parody mounted by the United States that hid genocide. It is well known that the great powers recruited Nazis during the post-war period and used them for their own benefits.They were primarily important scientists (e.g. von Braun) or intelligence agents with a wealth of information. However, Globocnik would not have been acceptable, and he would not have been justified in the slightest way.Some investigators claimed that the former commander of Belzek and Sobibor lived in the United States. They even wielded secret documents to prove it. At the beginning of the new millennium, German journalist and writer Gitta Sereny proved that this is an unfounded 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 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 there. He said that the cemetery was a sacred place, and the dead who lived did not deserve the company.
Odilo Globocnik was buried in an open field opposite the walls of the church without a ritual.
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