The Nazi Camp Commandants
Sobibor’s Final Camp Commandant: Franz Reichleitner and Operation Reinhard
13m
After the invasion of Poland in 1939, Nazi Germany escalated its campaign of terror into systematic genocide. In 1941, the regime launched Operation Reinhard, establishing extermination camps in occupied Poland, including Sobibor.
This film examines Franz Reichleitner, the last commandant of Sobibor. Having previously worked in the Nazi euthanasia program, Reichleitner applied methods of mass murder to the camp’s operations. Under his command, around 250,000 Jews were murdered in gas chambers.
In October 1943, prisoners carried out a daring uprising that allowed dozens to escape. Sobibor was later dismantled in an attempt to erase all traces of the crime.
Up Next in Season 1
-
Shooting from the Villa: Commandant G...
30 January 1933. Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany, and the Nazi regime begins turning persecution into state policy. Across Europe, thousands of camps and ghettos are established. One of the men who rose within this system was Gustav Willhaus.
A member of the Nazi Party and the SS, Wil...
-
Inside Dachau’s Brutality: Crimes of ...
At Dachau concentration camp, brutality was not random—it was enforced.
Alexander Piorkowski served as Nazi commandant from 1940 to 1942, overseeing a system built on violence, punishment, and death. Soviet prisoners of war were secretly executed and erased from records, while the sick and weak ...
