The Extermination of Jews in the German "Reinhardt" Operation

This exhibition, translated and adapted from the museum’s Polish-language copy, examines the systematic murder of Jews in the General Government by Nazi Germany during 1942-1943. It was created for the 80th anniversary of Operation Reinhardt and runs independently of the permanent “SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor” exhibition, open since 18 March 2025.

The Sobibór Museum and Memorial Site on the exhibition:

The exhibition was created for the 80th anniversary of Operation “Reinhardt”. It presents the perpetrators, the chronology of the crime and the main extermination sites, with the subject matter divided into 20 thematic sections. The historical texts are illustrated with photographs, documents and maps, and supplemented by survivor testimonies. Above all, though, the exhibition commemorates the victims of antisemitism and of the persecution carried out in the name of a racist ideology.

What to expect

The exhibition documents how, in the course of Operation Reinhardt, more than 1.5 million people - predominantly Polish Jews, alongside citizens of Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, France, Greece and other countries - were murdered in the death camps and concentration camps linked to the operation.

The script is by historian Dariusz Libionka, with graphic design by Ewelina Kruszewska and coordination by Aleksandra Skrabek. It was produced with the Jewish Historical Institute, the Warsaw Ghetto Museum and the Towarzystwo Projektów Edukacyjnych (Society for Educational Projects). Earlier, panel versions of the show travelled to Warsaw, Przemyśl, Kielce and Białystok in 2022 and to Poniatowa in 2023; a shortened version is on permanent display in barrack 55 of the State Museum at Majdanek. Set expectations correctly: the twenty thematic sections are text, photographs, documents and maps, not museum objects, and reading through the whole show carefully usually takes more than half an hour.

Tickets, opening hours and current information are available on the Sobibór Museum and Memorial Site’s website .

Context

Operation Reinhardt was the codename for the secret German plan to exterminate the Jews of the General Government, carried out from March 1942 to November 1943; it was named after Reinhard Heydrich, assassinated in Prague in June 1942. Odilo Globocnik ran it for the SS and police, with officers including Christian Wirth and Franz Stangl implementing it directly; the three death camps of Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka, plus the Majdanek concentration camp, were its main killing sites. Historians estimate roughly two million victims across the operation as a whole; the Sobibór museum’s own figure of “more than 1.5 million”, used above, refers more narrowly to the death camps and Majdanek - both numbers are correct because they count different things.

Tickets and time

Admission to the Museum and Memorial Site in Sobibór is free - for the entire site, the permanent “SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor” exhibition and this temporary show alike; there is no separate ticket or extra charge for either. Self-guided visits need no booking. A guided tour - in Polish, English or German - must be reserved by phone (+48 82 572 60 31) or email (centrum@sobibor-memorial.eu ). The museum is open daily except Mondays: April-October 9:00-18:00 (6 PM), last admission to the exhibition at 16:30 (4:30 PM); November-March 9:00-16:00, last admission at 15:30 (3:30 PM); also closed on New Year’s Day, Epiphany, Easter, Corpus Christi, 1 and 11 November, and 24-31 December. Given the nature of the site, the museum does not recommend visiting with children under 14 - this is a show for adults and teenagers ready for a difficult subject, not a stop on a family day trip. A free visitor app is available on-site. English on site: guided tours run in English on request; the museum publishes a full English translation of the exhibition text online; we found no confirmation that the physical wall panels themselves carry bilingual labels, so a visitor who does not read Polish should book an English-speaking guide rather than rely on a self-guided walk-through.

See also

• The abbreviated version of this same exhibition is permanently on view in barrack 55 of the State Museum at Majdanek in Lublin, the parent institution of the Sobibór museum.
• The museum on the site of the Bełżec camp documents the second of the three Operation Reinhardt death camps and fills out the picture of the operation as a whole.

Museum profile: Museum and Memorial Site in Sobibór .