Nisko Plan

The Nisko Plan, also, the Lublin Plan, or the Nisko-Lublin Plan (German: Nisko und Lublin Plan), was developed in September 1939 by the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) as the "territorial solution to the Jewish Question". In contrast to similar Nazi "Madagascar" and other plans (developed before World War II), the Nisko Plan was devised after the invasion of Poland and implemented between October 1939 and April 1940 by the Germans setting up the so-called Lublin reservation known also as the Nisko reservation (German: Lublin Reservat or Nisko Reservat), a concentration camp complex, in the Generalgouvernement. The plan and the reservation were named after the cities of Lublin and Nisko, which bordered the area and would have become part of the reservation after its envisioned though never realized enlargement.

When the Nazis implemented the plan, they set up a variety of forced labour camps adjacent to the reservation, with the reservation supplying the camps with workforce. These were various camps of the Burggraben project, intended to fortify the Nazi-Soviet demarcation line, and the Lublin-Lipowa camp supplying the local SS units.

Adolf Hitler, Nazi chief ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, and Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler planned the reservation, with active participation by SS-Obersturmbannführer and "architect of the Holocaust", Adolf Eichmann; Hans Frank and Arthur Seyss-Inquart of the Generalgouvernement's administration; and Heinrich Müller of the Gestapo. Odilo Globocnik, the former Gauleiter of Vienna, then SS and Police Leader of the Lublin district, implemented the plans and was in direct charge of both the reservation and the camps.

In total, about 95,000 Jews were deported to the Lublin reservation before it was dissolved for pragmatic reasons. Though the Burggraben camps were temporarily closed in late 1940, many of them were reactivated in 1941. The main camp became the first Nazi extermination camp, Belzec. Two other extermination camps, Sobibor and Majdanek, were later set up in the Lublin district. The Lipowa camp became a subcamp of the latter in 1943.