General Government in the context of "Wannsee Conference"

Kraków, officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 (2023), with approximately 8 million additional people living within a 100 km (62 mi) radius. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 and has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life. Cited as one of Europe's most beautiful cities, its Old Town was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978, one of the world's first sites granted the status.

The city began as a hamlet on Wawel Hill and was a busy trading centre of Central Europe in 985. In 1038, it became the seat of Polish monarchs from the Piast dynasty, and subsequently served as the centre of administration under Jagiellonian kings and of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until the late 16th century, when Sigismund III transferred his royal court to Warsaw. With the emergence of the Second Polish Republic in 1918, Kraków reaffirmed its role as the nucleus of a national spirit. After the invasion of Poland, at the start of World War II, the newly defined Distrikt Krakau became the seat of Nazi Germany's General Government. The Jewish population was forced into the Kraków Ghetto, a walled zone from where they were sent to Nazi extermination camps such as the nearby Auschwitz, and Nazi concentration camps like Płaszów. However, the city was spared from destruction. In 1978, Karol Wojtyła, archbishop of Kraków, was elevated to the papacy as Pope John Paul, the first non-Italian pope in 455 years.

Belzec (English: /ˈbɛl.zɛk/ or /ˈbɛl.ʒɛts/, Polish: [ˈbɛu̯ʐɛt͡s]; German: [ˈbɛlzɛts]) was a Nazi German extermination camp in occupied Poland. It was built by the SS for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to murder all Polish Jews, a major part of the "Final Solution", the overall Nazi effort to complete the genocide of all European Jews. Before Germany's defeat put an end to this project more than six million Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust. The camp operated from 17 March 1942 to the end of June 1943. It was situated about 500 m (1,600 ft) south of the local railroad station of Bełżec, in the new Lublin District of the General Government territory of German-occupied Poland. The burning of exhumed corpses on five open-air grids and bone crushing continued until March 1943.

Between 430,000 and 500,000 Jews are believed to have been murdered by the SS at Bełżec. It was the third-deadliest extermination camp, exceeded only by Treblinka and Auschwitz. Only seven Jews performing slave labour with the camp's Sonderkommando survived World War II. Only Rudolf Reder's experience there became known, thanks to his official postwar testimony.The lack of viable witnesses able to testify about the camp's operation is the primary reason why Bełżec is little known, despite the victim number count. Israeli historian David Silberklang writes that Belzec "was perhaps the place most representative of the totality and finality of the Nazi plans for Jews".

Sobibor (/ˈsoʊbɪbɔːr/ SOH-bi-bor; Polish: Sobibór [sɔˈbibur]; German: [ˈzoːbibɔʁ]) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland.

As an extermination camp rather than a concentration camp, Sobibor existed for the sole purpose of murdering Jews. The vast majority of prisoners were gassed within hours of arrival. Those not killed immediately were forced to assist in the operation of the camp, and few survived more than a few months. In total, some 170,000 to 250,000 people were murdered at Sobibor, making it the fourth-deadliest Nazi camp after Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Belzec.

Kraków District (German: Distrikt Krakau, Polish: Dystrykt krakowski) was one of the original four administrative districts set up by Nazi Germany after the German occupation of Poland during the years of 1939–1945. This district, along with the other three districts, formed the General Government. It was established on October 12, 1939 by Adolf Hitler, with the capital in occupied Kraków – the historic residence of Polish royalty. The Nazi Gauleiter Hans Frank became the Governor-General of the entire territory of the General Government. He made his residence in Kraków at the heavily guarded Wawel castle. Frank was the former legal counsel to the Nazi Party.

The Kraków Ghetto official name: Jewish Residential District in Krakow (German: Der jüdische Wohnbezirk in Krakau) was one of five major metropolitan Nazi ghettos created by Germany in the new General Government territory during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It was established for the purpose of exploitation, terror, and persecution of local Polish Jews. The ghetto was later used as a staging area for separating the "able workers" from those to be deported to extermination camps in Operation Reinhard. The ghetto was liquidated between June 1942 and March 1943, with most of its inhabitants deported to the Belzec extermination camp as well as to Płaszów slave-labor camp, and Auschwitz concentration camp, 60 kilometres (37 mi) rail distance.

51°13′14″N 22°35′58″E / 51.22056°N 22.59944°E / 51.22056; 22.59944

Majdanek (or Lublin) was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had three gas chambers, two wooden gallows, and some 227 structures in all, placing it among the largest of Nazi concentration camps. Although initially intended for forced labor rather than extermination, it was used to murder an estimated 78,000 people during Operation Reinhard, the German plan to murder all Polish Jews within their own occupied homeland. In operation from 1 October 1941 to 22 July 1944, it was captured nearly intact. The rapid advance of the Soviet Red Army during Operation Bagration prevented the SS from destroying most of its infrastructure, and Deputy Camp Commandant Anton Thernes failed to remove the most incriminating evidence of war crimes.

Following the Invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War II, nearly a quarter of the entire territory of the Second Polish Republic was annexed by Nazi Germany and placed directly under the German civil administration. The rest of Nazi-occupied Poland was renamed as the General Government district. The annexation was part of the "fourth partition of Poland" by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, outlined months before the invasion, in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.

Some smaller territories were incorporated directly into the existing Gaue East Prussia and Silesia, while the bulk of the land was used to create new Reichsgaue Danzig-West Prussia and Wartheland. Of those, Reichsgau Wartheland was the largest and the only one comprising solely the annexed territory.

Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt (German: Aktion Reinhard or Aktion Reinhardt; also Einsatz Reinhard or Einsatz Reinhardt) was the codename of the secret German plan in World War II to exterminate Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied Poland. This deadliest phase of the Holocaust was marked by the introduction of extermination camps. The operation proceeded from March 1942 to November 1943; about 1.47 million or more Jews were murdered in just 100 days from late July to early November 1942, a rate which is approximately 83% higher than the commonly suggested figure for the kill rate in the Rwandan genocide. In the time frame of July to October 1942, the overall death toll, including all killings of Jews and not just Operation Reinhard, amounted to two million killed in those four months alone. It was the single fastest rate of genocidal killing in history.

During the operation, as many as two million Jews were sent to Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka to be murdered in purpose-built gas chambers. In addition, facilities for mass-murder using Zyklon B were developed at about the same time at the Majdanek concentration camp and at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, near the earlier-established Auschwitz I camp.

During World War II, Trawniki men ([travˈniki]; German: Trawnikimänner) were Eastern European Nazi collaborators, consisting of either volunteers or recruits from prisoner-of-war camps set up by Nazi Germany for Soviet Red Army soldiers captured in the border regions during Operation Barbarossa launched in June 1941. Thousands of these volunteers served in the General Government territory of German-occupied Poland until the end of World War II. Trawnikis belonged to a category of Hiwis (German abbreviation for Hilfswilliger, literally "those willing to help"), Nazi auxiliary forces recruited from native subjects serving in various jobs such as concentration camp guards.

Between September 1941 and September 1942, the German SS and police trained 2,500 Trawniki men known as Hiwi Wachmänner (guards) at the special training camp at Trawniki outside of Lublin; by the end of 1944, 5,082 men were on active duty. Trawnikimänner were organized by Streibel into two SS Sonderdienst battalions. Some 1,000 Hiwis are known to have run away during field operations. Although the majority of Trawniki men or Hiwis came from among the prisoners of war, there were also Volksdeutsche from Eastern Europe among them, valued because of their ability to speak Russian, Ukrainian and other languages of the occupied territories. All the officers at the Trawniki camp were Reichsdeutsche (citizens of the German Reich), and most of the squad commanders were Volksdeutsche (people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship). The conscripted civilians and former Soviet POWs included Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Belarusians, Estonians, Georgians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Russians, Tatars, and Ukrainians. The Trawnikis took a major part in Operation Reinhard, the Nazi plan to exterminate Jews. They also served at extermination camps and played an important role in the annihilation of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (see the Stroop Report), among others.