- Training site
- Trawniki
- Period
- 1941–1944
- Estimate
- About 5,000 trainees
- Role
- Auxiliary guards
Who they were
Many recruits came from Soviet POW camps where starvation and disease were catastrophic. Ukrainians formed a large group, but recruits came from several Soviet national and ethnic backgrounds.
Recruitment under extreme conditions
Brutal POW conditions are essential context, but they do not eliminate responsibility for later documented participation in guarding, beating, deportation and murder.
Training and command
The SS trained auxiliaries in weapons, guard duty and police functions. German SS officers controlled training and deployment. The men were neither regular German SS members nor an independent national army.
Operation Reinhard
Trawniki-trained guards served at Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka and participated in ghetto deportations, forced-labor camps and shootings.
Warsaw and Erntefest
They also served with German forces during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and participated in the November 1943 Aktion Erntefest massacres.
Postwar accountability
Some former auxiliaries were investigated or tried in the Soviet Union, Poland, Germany, the United States and elsewhere. Personnel cards and trial files help reconstruct individual careers.
Sources
This page draws on the institutional sources listed below.