Inside the Trawniki SS Camp: Training the "Hiwis" - Stroop Report | E03

Episode 322

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The SS camp at Trawniki in the Lublin District of the General Government existed from July 1941 through July 1944. It underwent four changes of function and purpose in the three years of its existence.

From July until September 1941, Trawniki served as a holding pen for Soviet civilians and soldiers. From September 1941 until July 1944, it was a training facility for police auxiliaries deployed in Operation Reinhard. From June 1942 until September 1943, it served as a forced-labor camp for Jews within the framework of Operation Reinhard. Between September 1943 and May 1944 it was a subcamp of the Lublin/Majdanek concentration camp.

Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Less than two weeks later, German SS and police authorities in the Lublin district established a detention facility on the grounds of an abandoned sugar refinery outside of Trawniki. They were acting on the orders of the SS and Police Leader (SS- und Polizeiführer; SSPF) for Lublin District, SS Major General Odilo Globocnik.

Managed by an officer on Globocnik's staff, SS Captain Hermann Höfle, the Trawniki camp originally was a holding center for refugees and Soviet POWs, whom the Security Police and SD had designated either potential collaborators or dangerous persons. On July 9, 1941, 676 inmates were incarcerated there.

In September 1941, pursuant to his July 17, 1941, appointment as Commissioner for the Establishment of SS and Police Bases in the New Eastern Territory, Globocnik transformed the facility into a training camp for auxiliary police personnel to maintain security for proposed German settlements in the occupied Soviet Union. Globocnik's staff recruited as auxiliaries captured Soviet soldiers, who, after being processed in Trawniki, entered the Guard Forces (Wachmannschaften) of the SSPF in the Lublin District. The first Soviet soldiers recruited from the prisoner-of-war camps arrived at Trawniki in early September 1941.

On October 27, 1941, Globocnik appointed SS Captain Karl Streibel to command the newly christened Trawniki training camp, a position Streibel held until the evacuation of the camp in July 1944.

The "Trawniki Men"

SS and police officials inducted, processed, and trained 2,500 auxiliary police guards (Wachmänner, also known as Trawniki men) at Trawniki training camp between September 1941 and September 1942. Virtually all of them had been Soviet prisoners of war.

As German military reverses and the murderous treatment of the prisoners of war dried up the supply of suitable Soviet soldiers in the autumn of 1942, Streibel's men conscripted civilians. These civilians were primarily young Ukrainians, residing in Galicia, Wolhynia (Volhynia), Podolia, and the Lublin District. When Globocnik transferred out of Lublin in September 1943, he reported that 3,700 Wachmänner were serving in the Trawniki system. In fact, more than 4,750 identification numbers had been issued by this time.

Between 1941 and 1944, SS and police officials trained approximately 5,082 men at Trawniki. The Trawniki men were organized into two battalions under the command of SS Second Lieutenant Willi Franz and SS First Lieutenant Johann Schwarzenbacher.

Deployment in the operations of the "Final Solution" became a key function of the Trawniki-trained guards. The Trawniki men provided the guard units for the Operation Reinhard killing centers at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka II. Companies of Trawniki-trained guards served for a time in the SS Death's-Head Units that guarded the concentration camps Lublin/Majdanek and Auschwitz. The Wachmänner also guarded forced-labor camps for Jews at Poniatowa, Budzyn, Treblinka I, the Janow Street Camp in Lvov, and other camps.

German SS and police authorities deployed the Trawniki men in deportation operations from both large and small ghettos in German-occupied Poland and as escorts for the transport trains from ghetto to killing center. Among the ghettos in which Trawniki-trained guards were deployed were Warsaw, Czestochowa, Lublin, Lvov, Radom, Krakow, and Bialystok.

Globocnik's recommendation for Streibel's promotion reflected the satisfaction of the SS leadership at how diligently the Wachmänner implemented their hideous tasks: Globocnik wrote that Streibel had commanded the Trawniki training camp:

“with the greatest discretion and understanding for the special leadership needs of this unit. These units have proved themselves in the best way in many anti-partisan missions, but especially in the framework of the resettlement of the Jews.”