What code name did Nazi Germany use for the 1942–1943 mass murder of Jews in occupied Poland?

Operation Reinhard was the Nazi code name for the mass murder of Jews in occupied Poland from 1942 to 1943.

The operation was named after Reinhard Heydrich, a senior SS official who had helped organize Nazi persecution and was assassinated in Prague in June 1942. Its main administrative organizer was Odilo Globocnik, who operated under Heinrich Himmler in the General Government, the German-occupied part of central Poland.

Operation Reinhard centered on the extermination camps Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka. Deportation trains carried Jews from ghettos and other occupied territories to these camps, where most victims were murdered soon after arrival. The operation also involved the confiscation and sorting of victims’ property for the German state and associated agencies.

Historians generally estimate that about 1.5 million Jews were murdered during Operation Reinhard, though totals vary by source and definition. The operation ended in late 1943 after the camps had largely been dismantled and the sites disguised. It was distinct from the broader Holocaust and from Operation Barbarossa, the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union.