GLOBOCNIK, ODILO°

GLOBOCNIK, ODILO° (1904–1945), Nazi executioner of Polish Jewry. Born in Trieste, Italy, Globocnik joined the Nazi Party in Austria in 1922 and the then illegal Austrian SS in 1934. He was nominated Gauleiter of Vienna in reward for his part in the preparation of Austria's annexation in 1938, but was later dismissed for embezzlement. Recognizing the usefulness of his ideological fanaticism and ambition, his longtime friend Heinrich Himmler brought him back from disgrace and appointed him SS and police leader for the Lublin District on November 1, 1939. In the fall of 1941 – just months before the Wannsee Conference – Himmler authorized Globocnik to organize what became known as Aktion Reinhard. He organized Jewish slave labor camps as industrial enterprises of the SS, and in April 1942 he was put in charge of "Action Reinhard" (see holocaust , General Survey) to annihilate Polish Jewry and confiscate their property. He organized the death camps of belzec , sobibor , majdanek , and treblinka . At the end of 1942, he directed the brutal resettlement of Poles from the Zamość region. In September 1943, he and other SS party officials who worked on Aktion Reinhard were transferred to Trieste. Globocnik committed suicide shortly after his arrest by British troops in Austria in May 1945. His role in the "Final Solution" was central and provides key information on the decision-making process for the murder of the Jews. The decision to annihilate the Jews in the Generalgouvernment (GG) was made as early as the first half of October 1941. On October 17, 1941, during a conference in Lublin in the presence of Hans Frank, SS and police leader for the Lublin District, Odilo Globocnik said that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and Hitler ordered the "evacuation of Jews beyond the Bug river," a statement that meant the physical elimination of Jews from the GG. Globocnik also planned to resettle all the Poles from the Lublin District and even spoke about the resettlement of Poles from the entire GG. Ethnic Germans were to take their place. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: R. Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz (1960); J. Tenenbaum, Race and Reich (1956), index; R.M.W. Kempner, Ha-Mikẓo'a Hashmadah (1963), index; J. Wulf, Das Dritte Reich und seine Vollstrecker (1961); Hilberg, Destruction of the European Jews (1961), index; Reitlinger, Final Solution (1953), index. (Yehuda Reshef)