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The ''Sonderaktion'' 1005 ((英語:Special Action 1005)), also called ''Aktion'' 1005, or ''Enterdungsaktion'' ((英語:Exhumation Action)) began in May 1942 during World War II to hide any evidence that people had been murdered by Nazi Germany in ''Aktion Reinhard'' in occupied Poland. The operation, which was conducted in strict secrecy from 1942–1944, used prisoners to exhume mass graves and burn the bodies. These work groups were officially called ''Leichenkommandos'' ("corpse units") and were all part of ''Sonderkommando'' 1005; inmates were often put in chains in order to prevent escape. In May 1943 the operation moved into occupied territories in Eastern Europe to destroy evidence of the Holocaust. ''Sonderaktion 1005'' was used to conceal the evidence of massacres committed by ''SS-Einsatzgruppen'' Nazi death squads that had massacred millions of people including 1.3 million Jews according to Historian Raul Hillberg, as well as Roma and local civilians in Eastern Europe. The ''Aktion'' was overseen by selected squads from the ''Sicherheitsdienst'' and ''Ordnungspolizei''. ==Operations== In March 1942, ''SS-Obergruppenführer'' Reinhard Heydrich placed ''SS-Standartenführer'' Paul Blobel in charge of the ''Aktion'' 1005. However its start was delayed after Heydrich was assassinated in June 1942 by Czechoslovakian SOE agents in ''Operation Anthropoid''. It was after the end of June that ''SS-Gruppenführer'' Heinrich Müller, head of the Gestapo finally gave Blobel his orders.〔 While the principal aim was to erase evidence of Jewish exterminations, the ''Aktion'' would also include non-Jewish victims of Nazi ''Einsatzgruppen''. Blobel began his work experimenting at Chełmno (Kulmhof). Attempts to use incendiary bombs to destroy exhumed bodies were unsuccessful as the weapons set fire to nearby forests. The most effective way was eventually found to be giant pyres on iron grills. The method involved building alternating layers of corpses and firewood on railway tracks. Afterwards remaining bone fragments could be crushed by pounding with heavy dowels or in a grinding machine and then re-buried in pits.〔 The operation officially began at Sobibór extermination camp. The ''Leichenkommando'' exhumed the bodies from mass graves around the camp and then burned them, after which task the workers were executed. The process then moved to Bełżec in November 1942.〔 The Auschwitz and Belsen camps had crematoria with furnace rooms on site to dispose of the bodies, therefore the ''Aktion'' 1005 commandos were not needed there.〔 Surplus corpses were burned by their own prisoners ''(pictured)''. The semi-industrial incineration of corpses at the Treblinka extermination camp began as soon as the political danger associated with the earlier burials was realized. In 1943, the 22,000 Polish victims of the Soviet Katyn massacre were discovered near Smolensk in Russia and reported to Adolf Hitler. Their remains were well preserved underground, attesting to the Soviet mass murder. By April 1943, the Nazi propaganda began to draw attention of the international community to this war crime.〔 The Katyn Commission was formed to make detailed examinations in an effort to drive a wedge between the Allies. Meanwhile, the secret orders to exhume mass graves and burn the hundreds of thousands of victims instead came directly from the Nazi leadership in April. The corpses that had been buried at Treblinka with the use of a crawler excavator were dug up and cremated on the orders of Heinrich Himmler himself, who visited the camp in March 1943. The instructions to utilise rails as grates came from ''Scharführer'' Herbert Floss, the camp's cremation expert. The bodies were placed on cremation pyres that were up to long, with rails laid across the pits on concrete blocks. They were splashed with petrol over wood, and burned in one massive blaze attended by roughly 300 prisoners who operated the pyres.〔 In Bełżec, the round-the-clock operation lasted till March 1943.〔(Operation Reinhard: "The attempt to remove traces" ) (reprint) Nizkor.org 2012. Retrieved 5 June 2014.〕 In Treblinka, it went on at full speed until the end of July.〔Holocaust Encyclopedia (10 June 2013). ( "Treblinka". ) United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 5 June 2014.〕 The operation also returned to the scenes of earlier mass killings such as Babi Yar, Ponary, the Ninth Fort,〔 as well as Bronna Góra.〔AŻIH, (Bronna Góra (Bronnaja Gora). ) Sites of Martyrdom. Museum of the History of Polish Jews ''Virtual Shtetl'' 2014.〕 By 1944, with Soviet armies advancing, ''SS-Obergruppenführer'' Wilhelm Koppe, head of the ''Reichsgau Wartheland'' ordered that each of the five districts of General Government territory set up its own Aktion 1005 commando to begin "cleaning" mass graves. The operations were not entirely successful as the advancing Soviet troops reached some of the sites before they could be cleared.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sonderaktion 1005」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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