The Nazi regime killed 1,32 million Jews in three months, 25% of all Holocaust victims, according to a study published today by the journal Science Advances.
The team led by Lewi Stone, from the University of Tel Aviv, determined that most of the murders of the so-called “Operation Reinhard” occurred in only three months: August, September and October 1942.
Of the 1.7 million victims during that operation of extermination of Jews by the regime commanded by Adolf Hitler, which lasted until 1943, 1.32 million were killed in those three months, that is, about 15,000 murders per day.
This finding implies that approximately 25% of all Holocaust victims were killed during those three months of “Operation Reinhard” in 1942.
The report not only indicates that the homicide rate during that operation has been underestimated over the years, but also provides new data on the “deep efficiency”, according to the authors, of the Nazi extermination camps and the systematic way in which the Jewish communities were exterminated.
Although it is known that during the Nazi campaign to eradicate the Jews during the Second World War, a large part of the Holocaust killings occurred during “Operation Reinhard”, the Nazis largely destroyed the records.
To get a reliable estimate, historian Yitzhak Arad collected data from the German national railway Deutsche Reichsbahn, which played a pivotal role in transporting millions of Jewish victims to the extermination camps.
Arad analyzed data from Reichsban on 480 train deportations from 393 Polish cities and ghettos to three key extermination camps during “Operation Reinhard”, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, and estimated the number of victims in each transport.
From these data, Stone’s team found the high concentration of murders during August, September and October 1942.
