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Belzec extermination camp

March 17, 2023

Coordinates: 50°22′18″N 23°27′27″E / 50.37167°N 23.45750°E / 50.37167; 23.45750

"Belzec" redirects here. For the nearby village, see Bełżec (village).

Belzec (English: /ˈbɛl.zɛk/ or /ˈbɛl.ʒɛts/, Polish: [ˈbɛu̯ʐɛt͡s]) was a Nazi German extermination camp 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" which in total entailed the murder of about 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.[2] The camp operated from 17 March 1942 to the end of June 1943.[3] 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.[4] The burning of exhumed corpses on five open-air grids and bone crushing continued until March 1943.[5]

Belzec
Nazi extermination camp
Jews from Lublin District during deportation to Belzec
Location of Bełżec (lower centre) on the map of German extermination camps marked with black and white skulls. Borders of the Second Polish Republic before World War II
Known forAnnihilation of Europe's Jews in the Holocaust
LocationNear Bełżec, General Government (German-occupied Poland)
Built by
Operated bySS-Totenkopfverbände
Commandant
First built1 November 1941 – March 1942
Operational17 March 1942 – end of June 1943
Number of gas chambers3 (later 6)[1]
InmatesPolish, German, Ukrainian and Austrian Jews
Killed434,508–600,000
Notable inmatesRudolf Reder

Between 430,000 and 500,000 Jews are believed to have been murdered by the SS at Bełżec.[3][6] It was the third-deadliest extermination camp, exceeded only by Treblinka and Auschwitz.[7] Only seven Jews performing slave labour with the camp's Sonderkommando survived World War II;[5] and only Rudolf Reder became known,[8] thanks to his official postwar testimony.[9] 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.[9] Israeli historian David Silberklang writes that Belzec "was perhaps the place most representative of the totality and finality of the Nazi plans for Jews".[10]

Background

In the Second Polish Republic, the village of Bełżec was situated between the two major cities in the southeastern part of the country including Lublin 76 kilometres (47 mi) northwest of Bełżec, and Lwów to the southeast (German: Lemberg, now Lviv, Ukraine) with the largest Jewish populations in the region. Bełżec fell within the German zone of occupation in accordance with the German-Soviet Pact against Poland. Originally, Jewish forced labour was brought into the area in April 1940 for the construction of military defence facilities of the German strategic plan codenamed Operation Otto against the Soviet advance beyond their common frontier following the Soviet invasion of 1939.[11]

 
Deportation of Jews to Bełżec from Zamość, April 1942

In the territory of the so-called Nisko 'reservation', the city of Lublin became the hub of early Nazi transfer of about 95,000 German, Austrian, and Polish Jews expelled from the West and the General Government area.[12] The prisoners were put to work by the Schutzstaffel (SS) in the construction of anti-tank ditches (Burggraben) along the transitory Nazi-Soviet border.[13] The Burggraben project was abandoned with the onset of Operation Barbarossa.[3][14] On 13 October 1941, Heinrich Himmler gave the SS-and-Police Leader of Lublin, SS Brigadeführer Odilo Globočnik an order to start Germanizing the area around Zamość,[11] which entailed the removal of Jews from the areas of future settlement.[15]

Camp construction

Main article: The Holocaust in Poland

The decision to begin work on the first stationary gas chambers in the General Government preceded the actual Wannsee Conference by three months.[11] The first steps were taken between mid-September and mid-October 1941,[16] and the construction began around 1 November.[17] The site near Bełżec was chosen for several reasons: it was situated on the border between the Lublin District and the German District of Galicia formed after Operation Barbarossa. It could "process" the Jews of both regions.[11] The ease of transportation was secured by the railroad junction at nearby Rawa-Ruska and the highway between Lublin-Stadt and Lemberg.[4] The northern boundary of the planned killing centre consisted of an anti-tank trench constructed a year earlier. The ditch, excavated originally for military purposes was likely to serve as the first mass grave. Globocnik brought in Obersturmführer Richard Thomalla who was a civil engineer by profession and the camp construction expert in the SS. Work had commenced in early November 1941, using local builders overseen by a squad of Trawniki guards. The installation, resembling a railway transit point for the purpose of forced labour, was finished before Christmas. It featured insulated barracks for showering among several other structures. Some local men were released. The SS completed the work in February 1942 by fitting in the tank engine and the exhaust piping systems for gassing. The trial killings were performed in early March.[18][19]

The "Final Solution" was formulated at the Wannsee Conference in late January 1942 by the leading proponents of gassing (who were unaware of Bełżec's existence),[8] including Wilhelm Dolpheid, Ludwig Losacker, Helmut Tanzmann and Governor Otto Wächter.[19] Dolpheid negotiated with the SS-Oberführer Viktor Brack in Berlin for the use of the Aktion T4 personnel in the process.[19] Only two months later, on 17 March 1942, the daily gassing operations at Bełżec extermination camp began with the T4 leadership brought in from Germany under the guise of Organisation Todt (OT).[11][20]

Experience in the Aktion T4 euthanasia program

The three commandants of the camp including Kriminalpolizei officers SS-Sturmbannführer Christian Wirth and SS-Hauptsturmführer Gottlieb Hering, had been involved in the forced euthanasia program since 1940 in common with almost all of their German staff thereafter.[19] Wirth had the leading position as the supervisor of six extermination hospitals in the Reich; Hering was the non-medical chief of the Sonnenstein gassing facility in Saxony as well as at the Hadamar Euthanasia Centre.[19] Christian Wirth had been a killing expert from the beginning as participant of the first T-4 gassing of handicapped people at the Brandenburg Euthanasia Centre. He was, therefore, an obvious choice to be the first commandant of the first stationary extermination camp of Operation Reinhard in the General Government. It was his proposal to use the exhaust gas emitted by the internal-combustion engine of a motorcar as the killing agent instead of the bottled carbon monoxide, because no delivery from outside the camp would be required as in the case of the T-4 method. However, Wirth decided that the comparable technology of mobile gas vans used at Chełmno extermination camp before December 1941 (and by the Einsatzgruppen in the East),[21] had proven insufficient for the projected number of victims from the Holocaust trains arriving at the new railway approach ramp.[22]

Wirth developed his method on the basis of experience he had gained in the fixed gas chambers of Aktion T4. Even though Zyklon B became broadly available later on, Wirth decided against it. Zyklon B was produced by a private firm for both Birkenau, and Majdanek nearby, but their infrastructure differed. Bełżec was an Operation Reinhard camp meant to circumvent the problems of supply, and instead, rely on a system of extermination based on ordinary and readily available killing agents. For economic and practical reasons, Wirth had almost the same carbon monoxide gas used in T-4, generated with the torque of a large engine. Although Holocaust witnesses' testimonies differ as to the type of fuel, Erich Fuchs' postwar affidavit indicates that most probably it was a petrol engine with a system of pipes delivering exhaust fumes into the gas chambers.[23] For very small transports of Jews and Gypsies over a short distance, a minimised version of the gas van technology was also used in Bełżec. The T-4 participant and first operator of the gas chambers, SS-Hauptscharführer Lorenz Hackenholt,[24] rebuilt an Opel Blitz post-office vehicle with the help of a local craftsman into a small gas van.[23] The killing process, using the lethal carbon monoxide, often failed to be completed quickly, inflicting horrific suffering on the victims as they suffocated to death. The guards jokingly referred to the killing site as the Hackenholt Foundation.[25]

Concealment of camp's purpose

 
Polish-language sign. Reads: "Attention! All belongings must be handed in at the counter except for money, documents and other valuables, which you must keep with you. Shoes should be tied together in pairs and placed in the area marked for shoes. Afterward, one must go completely naked to the showers."

Bełżec "processing" zone consisted of two sections surrounded by a high barbed wire fence camouflaged with cut fir branches: Camp 1, which included the victims' unloading area with two undressing barracks further up; as well as Camp 2, which contained the gas chambers and the mass graves dug by the crawler excavator.[26] The two zones were completely screened from each other and connected only by a narrow corridor called der Schlauch, or "the Tube".[3] All arriving Jews disembarked from the trains at a platform in the reception zone. They were met by SS-Scharführer Fritz Jirmann (Irmann) standing at the podium with a loudspeaker,[26] and were told by the Sonderkommando men that they had arrived at a transit camp.[27] To ready themselves for the communal shower, women and children were separated from men.[3] The disrobed new arrivals were forced to run along a fenced-off path to the gas chambers, leaving them no time to absorb where they were. The process was conducted as quickly as possible amid constant screaming by the Germans.[3] At times, a handful of Jews were selected at the ramp to perform all the manual work involved with extermination.[3]

The wooden gas chambers—which were built with double walls that were insulated by earth packed between them—were disguised as the shower barracks, so that the victims would not realise the true purpose of the facility. The gassing itself, which took about 30 minutes, was conducted by Hackenholt with the Ukrainian guards and a Jewish aide.[28] Removing the bodies from the gas chambers, burying them, sorting and repairing the victims' clothing for shipping was performed by Sonderkommando work-details.[28] The workshops for the Jewish prisoners and the barracks for the Ukrainian guards were separated from the "processing" zone behind an embankment of the old Otto Line with the barbed wire on top.[3] Most Jews from the corpse-unit (the Totenjuden) were murdered periodically and replaced by new arrivals, so that they would neither organise a revolt nor survive to tell about the camp's purpose.[3] The German SS and the administration were housed in two cottages outside the camp.[3]

Camp operation

 
Aerial photograph of Bełżec camp perimeter taken in 1944 by the Luftwaffe (a common practice with murder factories after clean-up, making sure that it is safe to abandon). Known structures are gone except for the brick-and-mortar garage and auto-shop for the SS, whose foundations still exist today (lower left). Across the fence (left), separated from the main camp, the Hiwi guards' accommodations with kitchen as well as sorting and packing yard for victims possessions. Dismantled barracks can still be seen surrounded by walking sand. The railway unloading platform, with two parallel ramps, marked with red arrow. A smaller arrow shows the holding pen for Jews still waiting to be "processed". Location of gas chambers marked with a cross. Undressing and hair-cropping area marked with rectangle, with fenced-out "Sluice" into the woods, obstructing the view of the surroundings. Cremation pyres and ash pits (yellow), upper half.

The history of Bełżec can be divided into two (or three) periods of operation. The first phase, from 17 March to the end of June 1942, was marked by the existence of smaller gas chambers housed in barracks constructed of planks and insulated with sand and rubber. Bełżec was the first killing centre of Operation Reinhard.[3] There were many technical difficulties with the early attempts at mass extermination. The gassing installation was imperfect and usually only one or two rooms were working, causing a backlog. In the first three months, 80,000 people were murdered and buried in pits covered with a shallow layer of earth. The victims were Jews deported from the Lublin Ghetto and its vicinity. The original three gas chambers were found insufficient for completing their purpose.[11]

The second phase of extermination began in July 1942, when new gas chambers were built of brick and mortar on a lightweight foundation,[29] thus enabling the facility to "process" Jews of the two largest agglomerations nearby including the Kraków and Lwów Ghettos. The wooden gas chambers were dismantled. The new building was 24 meters long and 10 meters wide and had six gas chambers, insulated with cement walls.[27] It could handle over 1,000 victims at a time. The design was soon imitated by the other two Operation Reinhard extermination camps: Sobibor and Treblinka.[11]

There was a hand-painted sign on the new building that read Stiftung Hackenholt or Hackenholt Foundation named after the SS man who designed it.[30] Until December 1942, at least 350,000 to 400,000 Jews were murdered in the new gas chambers.[11] One Wehrmacht sergeant at the train station in Rzeszów, Wilhelm Cornides, recorded in his diary a conversation with a German policeman on 30 August 1942. The Bahnschutzpolizei told him: "trains filled with Jews pass almost daily through the railway yards and leave immediately on the way to the camp. They return swept clean most often the same evening."[31] The last transport of Jews arrived at Bełżec on 11 December 1942.[11] The buried remains often swelled in the heat as a result of putrefaction and the escape of gases. The surface layer of soil split. In October 1942, the exhumation and burning of all corpses was ordered to cover up the crime on direct orders from SS-Obergruppenführer Odilo Globocnik, the deputy of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler in Berlin. The bodies were placed on pyres made from rail tracks, splashed with petrol and burned over wood. The bones were collected and crushed. The last period of camp's operation continued until June 1943 when the area was ploughed over, and disguised as a farm.[3]

Command structure

Further information: Belzec trial

The camp's first commandant, Christian Wirth, lived very close to the camp in a house which also served as a kitchen for the SS as well as an armoury.[32] He later moved to the Lublin airfield camp, to oversee Operation Reinhard till the end. After the German takeover of Italy in 1943, he was transferred by Globocnik to serve along with him in his hometown of Trieste.[33] They set up the San Sabba concentration and transit camp there, killing up to 5,000 prisoners and sending 69 Holocaust trains to Auschwitz. Wirth received the Iron Cross in April 1944. The following month he was killed by partisans whilst travelling in an open-top car in what is now western Slovenia. After the camp's closure, his successor there SS-Hauptsturmführer Gottlieb Hering was transferred to Poniatowa concentration camp temporarily until the massacres of the Aktion Erntefest, and later followed Wirth and Globocnik to Trieste.[34] After the war ended, Hering served for a short time as the chief of Criminal Police of Heilbronn in the American zone, and died in autumn 1945 in a hospital. Lorenz Hackenholt survived the defeat of Germany, but disappeared in 1945 without a trace.[23]

 
Bełżec extermination camp SS staff, 1942. from right to left: Heinrich Barbl, Artur Dachsel, Lorenz Hackenholt, Ernst Zierke, Karl Gringers, (unknown), Reinhold Feiks, Karl Alfred Schluch, and Friedrich Tauscher (front left).

Only seven former members of the SS-Sonderkommando Bełżec were indicted 20 years later in Munich. Of these, just one, Josef Oberhauser (leader of the SS guard platoon), was brought to trial in 1964, and sentenced to four years and six months in prison, of which he served half before being released.[35]

Camp guards

Belzec camp guards included German Volksdeutsche and up to 120 former Soviet prisoners of war (mostly Ukrainians) organised into four platoons.[5][27] Following Operation Barbarossa, all of them underwent special training at the Trawniki SS camp division before they were posted as "Hiwis" (German abbreviation for Hilfswilligen, lit. "those willing to help") in the concentration camps as guards and gas chamber operators.[36] They provided the bulk of Wachmänner collaborators in all major killing sites of the Final Solution.[37][38]

Gas chambers

Main article: Gerstein Report

A detailed description of how the gas chambers at Belzec were managed came in 1945 from Kurt Gerstein, Head of the Technical Disinfection Services who used to deliver Zyklon B to Auschwitz from the company Degesch during the Holocaust.[39] In his postwar report written at the Rottweil hotel while in the French custody, Gerstein described his visit to Belzec on 19 or 18 August 1942.[30] He witnessed there the unloading of 45 cattle cars crowded with 6,700 Jews deported from the Lwów Ghetto less than a hundred kilometres away,[40] of whom 1,450 were already dead on arrival from suffocation and thirst. The remaining new arrivals were marched naked in batches to the gas chambers; beaten with whips to squeeze tighter inside.[41]

Unterscharführer Hackenholt was making great efforts to get the engine running. But it doesn't go. Captain Wirth comes up. I can see he is afraid because I am present at a disaster. Yes, I see it all and I wait. My stopwatch showed it all, 50 minutes, 70 minutes, and the diesel did not start.[a] The people wait inside the gas chambers. In vain. They can be heard weeping 'like in the synagogue', says Professor Pfannenstiel,[b] his eyes glued to a window in the wooden door. Furious, Captain Wirth lashes the Ukrainian assisting Hackenholt twelve, thirteen times, in the face. After 2 hours and 49 minutes—the stopwatch recorded it all—the diesel started. Up to that moment, the people [locked] in those four crowded chambers were still alive, four times 750 persons in four times 45 cubic meters.[c] Another 25 minutes elapsed. Many were already dead, that could be seen through the small window because an electric lamp inside lit up the chamber for a few moments. After 28 minutes, only a few were still alive. Finally, after 32 minutes, all were dead ... Dentists hammered out gold teeth, bridges and crowns. In the midst of them stood Captain Wirth. He was in his element, and showing me a large can full of teeth, he said: "See for yourself the weight of that gold! It's only from yesterday and the day before. You can't imagine what we find every day—dollars, diamonds, gold. You'll see for yourself!" —Kurt Gerstein, Gerstein Report[46]

Closure and dismantlement

 
Bełżec mausoleum. Unloading ramp and cremation rails (historical artefacts).
 
Portion of the memorial in Bełżec. Cemented rails built in place of the original unloading ramp, lead in all directions from which the Jews were brought in.[47]
 
The field of crushed stone serves as grave marker; the entire perimeter contains human ashes mixed with sand.[47]

In the last phase of the camp operations, all prior mass graves were unearthed by a mechanical digger. It was the result of direct orders from the Nazi leadership (possibly from Himmler), soon after the Soviet Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish soldiers was discovered in Russia. At Katyn, the German-led exhumations by the international Katyn Commission revealed details of the mass murder by examining preserved bodies.[48] The Germans attempted to use the commission's results to drive a wedge between the Allies.[49] All corpses buried at Bełżec were secretly exhumed and then gradually cremated on long open-air pyres, part of the country-wide plan known as the Sonderaktion 1005. Bone fragments were pulverised and mixed with the ashes to hide the evidence of mass murder. The site was planted with small firs and wild lupines and all camp structures were dismantled.[3][34]

The last train with 300 Jewish Sonderkommando prisoners who performed the clean-up operation departed to Sobibor extermination camp for gassing in late June 1943. They were told that they were being evacuated to Germany instead. Any equipment that could be reused was taken by the German and Ukrainian personnel to the concentration camp Majdanek. Wirth's house and the neighbouring SS building, which had been the property of the Polish Railway before the war, were not demolished.[34] After locals started digging for valuables in Bełżec, the Germans installed a permanent guard so that their mass-murder would not come to light.[50][51] SS personnel with work commandos turned the camp into a fake farm with one Ukrainian SS guard assigned to settle there permanently with his family.[34] This model for guarding and disguising murder sites was also adopted at the Treblinka and Sobibor death camps.[34]

Victims

 
8-page from "Raczyński's Note" with Treblinka, Bełżec and Sobibor extermination camps – part of official note of Polish government-in-exile to Anthony Eden, 10 December 1942

The historian Eugeniusz Szrojt in his 1947 study published by the Bulletin of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland (Biuletyn Głównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Niemieckich w Polsce, 1947) following an investigation by GKBZNwP which began in 1945, estimated the number of people murdered in Bełżec at 600,000.[47] This number became widely accepted in the literature. Raul Hilberg gave a figure of 550,000.[52] Yitzhak Arad accepted 600,000 as minimum,[36] and the sum in his table of Bełżec deportations by the city exceeded 500,000.[36] Józef Marszałek calculated 500,000.[53] British historian Robin O'Neil once gave an estimate of about 800,000 based on his investigations at the site.[54] German historians Dieter Pohl and Peter Witte,[55] gave an estimate of 480,000 to 540,000. Michael Tregenza stated that it would have been possible to have buried up to one million victims on the site although the true number of people murdered is probably around half that number.[56]

 
This document, the so-called Höfle Telegram, confirms 434,508 Jews were murdered at Bełżec in 1942.

The crucial piece of evidence came from the declassified Höfle Telegram sent to Berlin on 11 January 1943 by Operation Reinhard's Chief of Staff Hermann Höfle. It was published in 2001 by Stephen Tyas and Peter Witte.[55] The radio telegram indicated that 434,508 Jews were deported to Bełżec through 31 December 1942 based on numbers shared by the SS with the state-run Deutsche Reichsbahn (DRG).[55] The camp had ceased to operate for mass-murder by then. The clean-up commando of up to 500 prisoners remained in the camp, disinterring the bodies and burning them. The Sonderkommando was transported to Sobibor extermination camp around August 1943 and murdered on arrival. "In our view," wrote Pohl & Witte in 2001, "there is no evidence to justify a figure higher than that of 600,000 victims."[57]

The Holocaust train records were notoriously incomplete as revealed by postwar analysis by the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes against the Polish Nation.[58] The difference between the "low-end" figure and other estimates can be explained by the lack of exact and detailed sources on the deportations statistics. Thus, Y. Arad writes, that he had to rely, in part, on Yizkor books of Jewish ghettos, which were not guaranteed to give the exact estimates of the numbers of deportees. He also relied on partial German railway documentation, from which the number of trains could be gleaned. Some assumptions had to be made about the number of persons per each Holocaust train.[36] The Deutsche Reichsbahn calculations were predetermined with the carrying capacity of each trainset set up at 50 boxcars, each loaded with 50 prisoners, which was routinely disregarded by the SS cramming trains up to 200% capacity for the same price.[12]

The Höfle's numbers were repeated in Korherr Report suggesting their common origin. Other sources, like Westermann's report,[59] contain the exact data about the number of deported persons, but only estimates of the numbers of those who died in transit.[59]

Post-war

 
Symbolic "death road" (portion of the memorial in Bełżec). Underground passage built in place of former "Sluice" into the gas chambers, evokes the feelings of no escape.[47]
 
Belzec extermination camp memorial. During the construction of the Mausoleum trees planted by the SS were removed and only the oaks, that witnessed the genocide, were retained.[47]
 
The ohel of the Belzec mausoleum
 
Belzec extermination camp museum

Grave robbing at the site resumed after the German guard fled for the approaching Red Army.[50] In 1945, the Lublin District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes conducted an investigation into the crimes in Bełżec. The mass graves at the site were dug up by graverobbers seeking gold and valuables.[60] In 1945 provincial authorities and the Tomaszów Lubelski Jewish Committee discussed the continuing plunder of the site. In 1945 Szmul Pelc, the chair of the committee of the Jewish Committee, was murdered by local graverobbers.[61] Investigations of grave digging continued through the late 1950s. While Lublin District Commission published the results of their investigation in 1947, the site itself continued to be neglected and memory of the site was suppressed as very few of the camp's victims were Polish, and few of the camp's primarily Jewish victims survived.[60] Beginning in the second half of the 1950s the pursuit by Germany itself of the German perpetrators revived interest in the site. The Soviet trials of Russian camp personnel, held in Kiev and Krasnodar in the early 1960s soon followed.[62]

In the 1960s, the grounds of the former Bełżec camp were fenced off. The first monuments were erected, although the area did not correspond to the actual size of the camp during its operation due to lack of proper evidence and modern forensic research. Some commercial development took place in areas formerly belonging to it. Also, its remote location on the Polish–Soviet border meant that few people visited the site before the revolutions of 1989 and the return of democracy. It was largely forgotten and poorly maintained.[62]

Following the collapse of the Communist dictatorship in 1989, the situation began to change. As the number of visitors to Poland interested in Holocaust sites increased, more of them came to Bełżec. In the 1990s the camp appeared badly neglected, even though it was cleaned by students from Bełżec school.[62] In the late 1990s extensive investigations were carried out on the camp grounds to determine precisely the camp's extent and provide greater understanding of its operation. Buildings constructed after the war on the camp grounds were removed. In 2004, Bełżec became a new branch of the Majdanek State Museum. New official monuments commemorating the camp's victims were unveiled.[63]

One of the prime benefactors behind the new memorial at Bełżec was Miles Lerman, an American Holocaust survivor whose own parents were murdered in Bełżec, raising approximately 5 million dollars with the help of the Polish government and the American Jewish Committee. Another prominent Holocaust survivor with a connection to Bełżec is philanthropist Anita Ekstein, former national chair of March of the Living Canada. Anita Ekstein was born in the Lviv area and was hidden as a child by Righteous Poles during the Holocaust.[64] Her mother, Ethel Helfgott, was among the victims in Bełżec.[65] Anita Ekstein has led many groups of students on educational trips to Poland where she shares her Holocaust story. She first visited Bełżec in 2005, a year after the new memorial opened, and discovered her mother's name inscribed on the memorial wall on Mother's Day.[66]

Archeological studies

From late 1997 until early 1998, a thorough archaeological survey of the site was conducted by a team led by two Polish scientists including Andrzej Kola, director of the Underwater Archaeological Department at the University of Toruń, and Mieczysław Góra, senior curator of the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography in Łódź (pl). The team identified the railway sidings and remains of a number of buildings. They also found 33 mass graves, the largest of which had an area of 480 m2 (5,200 sq ft) and was 4.8 m (16 ft) deep. The total volume of these mass graves was estimated at 21,000 m3 (0.74 million cu ft).[29] Air photo analysis suggests that these 33 mass graves were not the only graves at Bełżec extermination camp.[67]

All graves discovered by archaeologists contained large amounts of human cremation remains, and 10 graves also contained unburned human remains, which Prof. Kola described as follows: "Deposition of corpses in the water-bearing layers or in very damp structure of the ground just above that layer, with the difficulty of air penetration, because of the depth, caused the changes of the deposited bodies into adipocere. In some graves the layer of corpses reached the thickness of ca 2,00m."[29]

Survivors

It is believed that some 50 Jews might have escaped from Bełżec and only seven were still alive at the war's end. An unknown number of prisoners jumped out from the moving Holocaust trains on the way to the camp, at their own peril.[5] The railway embankments used to be lined with bodies.[31]

There were only two Jewish escapees from the camp who shared their testimony with the Polish Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi German Crimes. They were Rudolf Reder and Chaim Hirszman. While Reder submitted a deposition in January 1946 in Kraków, Hirszman was assassinated in March 1946 at his home, by so-called "cursed soldiers", from the anti-communist resistance organisation TOW. (Following the war's end, Hirszman had joined MBP, a secret police organisation created by the new Stalinist regime in Poland, to crush the anti-communist underground. MBP used methods including torture, extrajudicial executions, and the deportation to Siberia of over 50,000 political prisoners.[68]) Hirszman was murdered before he was able to give a full account of his experiences at the camp.[69]

Rudolf Reder summarised his account of the Bełżec camp imprisonment in the book Bełżec, published in 1946 by the Jewish Historical Committee in Kraków with Preface by Nella Rost, his editor and literary helper. The book was illustrated with a map by Józef Bau, a Holocaust survivor who studied at the Academy of Fine Arts. It was reprinted in 1999 by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum with translation by Margaret M. Rubel.[70] In 1960, Reder's testimony became part of the German preparations for the Bełżec trial in Munich against eight former SS members of the extermination camp personnel. The accused were set free except for Oberhauser, who was sentenced to 4½ years of imprisonment, and released after serving half of his sentence.[71]

See also

References

Informational notes

  1. ^ Affidavit of SS-Scharführer Erich Fuchs (8.4.63: 208 AR-Z 251/59, vol. 9, pp. 1784 f.) in the Sobibór-Bolender trial about the installation of the gas chambers would indicate that the engine disassembled from a tank or a lorry might have been fueled by gasoline or diesel.[42][43]
  2. ^ Before World War II, Pfannenstiel headed the ominous German Society for Race Hygiene (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene) as Professor of Hygiene at the University of Marburg in Germany, leading to the development of T4 programme some time later.[44]
  3. ^ The bricks-and-mortar building with the new gas chambers had six cubicles, each about 25 sq. m. It is almost impossible to squeeze such a large crowd [i.e. 750 people] into such a small space. The total of 750 victims per gas chamber was provided by the camp's commandant Christian Wirth to a company of high-ranking SS officers who visited the camp in the middle of Aug. 1942 including Gerstein himself. The above figure was stated in his Gerstein Report at face value. —from "End Notes" by Robin O'Neil.[45]

Citations

  1. ^ Arad 1999, p. 73.
  2. ^ Yad Vashem. "Aktion Reinhard" (PDF). Shoah Resource Center. Retrieved 1 July 2013.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m The Holocaust Encyclopedia. . United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original (Internet Archive) on 7 January 2012. Retrieved 10 May 2015.
  4. ^ a b MMPwB, , Muzeum-Miejsce Pamięci w Bełżcu, Oddział Państwowego Muzeum na Majdanku, archived from the original on 20 August 2009
  5. ^ a b c d ARC (26 August 2006). . Aktion Reinhard. Archived from the original on 25 December 2005. Retrieved 27 April 2015.
  6. ^ "Belzec Death Camp Memorial, Poland". Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies : University of Minnesota. Retrieved 10 May 2015.
  7. ^ Snyder, Timothy (16 July 2009). "Holocaust: The Ignored Reality". The New York Review. Retrieved 8 April 2022.
  8. ^ a b Bergen, Doris (2003). War & genocide: a concise history of the Holocaust Critical issues in history. Testimony of Rudolf Reder. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 185. ISBN 978-0847696314.
  9. ^ a b "Belzec Death Camp: Remember Me". Alphabetical Listing. Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team. 2007. Retrieved 27 April 2015.
  10. ^ Silberklang, David (2013). Gates of Tears: the Holocaust in the Lublin District. Yad Vashem. p. 16. ISBN 978-9653084643.
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  13. ^ Schwindt, Barbara (2005). Das Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslager Majdanek: Funktionswandel im Kontext der "Endlösung". Königshausen & Neumann. p. 52. ISBN 978-3826031236.
  14. ^ Browning, Christopher R. (1995). The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521558786.
  15. ^ Musiał 2000, pp. 192–194.
  16. ^ Browning, Christopher R. (1994). "The Nazi Decision to Commit Mass Murder: Three Interpretations: The Euphoria of Victory and the Final Solution: Summer-Fall 1941". German Studies Review. 17 (3): 477. doi:10.2307/1431894. ISSN 0149-7952. JSTOR 1431894.
  17. ^ Gerlach, Christian (17 March 2016). The Extermination of the European Jews. Cambridge University Press. p. 74. ISBN 978-0521880787.
  18. ^ Kenneth McVay, Yad Vashem (2015) [1984]. "The Construction of the Belzec Extermination Camp". The "Final Solution": Operation Reinhard – The Camps of Belzec, Sobibor & Treblinka. Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved 25 April 2015.
  19. ^ a b c d e "Aktion Reinhard and the Emergence of 'The Final Solution'". Deathcamps.org. 2014. Retrieved 4 March 2014.
  20. ^ . Annefrank.dk. 26 May 1945. Archived from the original on 3 February 2014. Retrieved 4 March 2014.
  21. ^ Klee, Dressen & Riess 1991, "Chapter 3. A new and better method of killing had to be found. The gas-vans". p. 69.
  22. ^ Jack Fischel (1998). The Holocaust. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 46–47, 175. ISBN 978-0313298790.
  23. ^ a b c Klee, Dressen & Riess 1991, pp. 230–237, 241, 296.
  24. ^ Michael Tregenza (2000), "The 'Disappearance' of SS-Hauptscharfuhrer Lorenz Hackenholt." A Report on the 1959–63 West German Police Search for Lorenz Hackenholt, the Gas Chamber Expert of the Aktion Reinhard Extermination Camps. Mazel on-line library. Internet Archive.
  25. ^ Harran, Marilyn, ed. (2000). "1942: The Final Solution". The Holocaust Chronicle (1st ed.). Publications International. p. 308. ISBN 978-0785329633.
  26. ^ a b USHMM (2015). Testimony of Bronisław Ragan. USHMM Collections. Retrieved 29 April 2015. See also: sketch by Jan Krupa and Bronisław Ragan made at the request of the Bełżec Mayor, circa 1971.
  27. ^ a b c Reder, Rudolf, Belzec, Państwowe Muzeum Oświęcim – Brzezinka, ed. by Franciszek Piper. ISBN 8390771535
  28. ^ a b Klee, Dressen & Riess 1991, "Chapter 4. The camp had clean sanitary facilities" pp. 238–244
  29. ^ a b c Andrzej Kola (2015) [2000]. Belzec. The Nazi Camp for Jews in the Light of Archaeological Sources. Translated from Polish by Ewa Józefowicz and Mateusz Józefowicz. Warsaw-Washington: The Council for the Protection of Memory of Combat and Martyrdom – The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. ISBN 978-8390559063. Retrieved 3 May 2015. Also in: Archeologists reveal new secrets of Holocaust, Reuters News, 21 July 1998.
  30. ^ a b Gerstein, Kurt, "Report" dated 4 May 1945, excerpted, translated, and reprinted in Klee, The Good Old Days, page 242
  31. ^ a b SJ H.E.A.R.T (2007). "Belzec Death Camp: Eyewitness Report – Wilhelm Cornides". HolocaustResearchProject.org. Retrieved 8 May 2015. Sources: Martin Gilbert, Peter Longerich, Max Freiherr Du Prel.
  32. ^ "Belzec – the house of Christian Wirth". Archived from the original on 17 November 2021. Retrieved 4 March 2014 – via YouTube.
  33. ^ San Sabba (2009). (PDF). With Selected Bibliography: 3. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 September 2012. Retrieved 2 May 2015.
  34. ^ a b c d e Arad 1999, pp. 371–372.
  35. ^ Sentence by the First Munich District Court (Belzec-Prozess – Urteil, LG München I) (in German). Retrieved 9 August 2013.
  36. ^ a b c d Arad 1999, pp. 52, 177.
  37. ^ USHMM (2014). "Holocaust Encyclopedia: Trawniki". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.
  38. ^ Mgr Stanisław Jabłoński (1927–2002). "Hitlerowski obóz w Trawnikach". The camp history (in Polish). Trawniki official website. Retrieved 30 April 2013.
  39. ^ Yahil, Leni (1991). The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932–1945. pp. 356–357. ISBN 978-0195045239.
  40. ^ Holocaust Encyclopedia, "Belzec: Chronology" United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2013.
  41. ^ David Cymet (2012). History vs. Apologetics: The Holocaust, the Third Reich, and the Catholic Church. Lexington Books. p. 274. ISBN 978-0739132951. Retrieved 3 May 2015.
  42. ^ Arad 1999, p. 31.
  43. ^ Klee, Dressen & Riess 1991, p. 230.
  44. ^ Klee, Dressen & Riess 1991, p. 238.
  45. ^ O'Neil, Robin (2011). "Appendix 5: Rudolf Reder's Bełzec: The End Product of 'The Rabka Four's' Activities in Distrikt Galicia". The Rabka Four: Instruments of Genocide and Grand Larceny (Poland). Spiderwize Publishing. p. 237. OCLC 796270628. Retrieved 12 May 2015 – via JewishGen.org.
  46. ^ Arad 1999, p. 102. Another translation of Gerstein's testimony can be found at Klee, Dressen & Riess (1991, p. 242).
  47. ^ a b c d e Jacek Małczyński (19 January 2009). "Drzewa "żywe pomniki" w Muzeum – Miejscu Pamięci w Bełżcu [Trees as living monuments at Bełżec]". Współczesna Przeszłość, 125–140, Poznań 2009: 39–46. Retrieved 8 August 2013.
  48. ^ International Katyn Commission (30 April 1943). "Commission Findings". Transcript, Smolensk 30 April 1943. Warsaw Uprising by Project InPosterum. Retrieved 15 November 2013.
  49. ^ Kużniar-Plota, Małgorzata (30 November 2004). "Decision to commence investigation into Katyn Massacre". Departmental Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation. Retrieved 26 August 2013.
  50. ^ a b Gross, Jan Tomasz; Gross, Irena Grudzinska (2012). Golden Harvest: Events at the Periphery of the Holocaust. Oxford University Press. pp. 22–26. ISBN 978-0199731671.
  51. ^ Spector, Robert Melvin (2005). World Without Civilization: Mass Murder and the Holocaust, History and Analysis, Volume 1. University Press of America. p. 435. ISBN 978-0761829638.
  52. ^ Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, Yale University Press, 2003, revised hardcover edition, ISBN 0300095570.
  53. ^ Joseph Poprzeczny (2004). Odilo Globocnik, Hitler's Man in the East (Notes to Chapter VII). Google eBook. McFarland. p. 400. ISBN 978-0786481460. Retrieved 9 August 2013.
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  55. ^ a b c Witte, Peter; Tyas, Stephen (Winter 2001). "A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of Jews during 'Einsatz Reinhardt' 1942". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 15 (3): 468–486. doi:10.1093/hgs/15.3.468.
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  58. ^ The Armia Krajowa communiqués detailing the number of trains arriving at Operation Reinhard death camps augmented by the demographic information regarding the number of people deported from each ghetto, were published by the Polish Underground State through the Biuletyn Informacyjny newspaper (BI) on behalf of the exiled Polish government in London. Grzegorz Mazur (2013). "The ZWZ-AK Bureau of Information and Propaganda". Essays and Articles. Polish Home Army Ex-Servicemen Association, London Branch. Retrieved 1 December 2013.
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Bibliography

  • Arad, Yitzhak (1999) [1987]. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0253342935. Retrieved 10 May 2015. Belzec.
  • Fahlbusch, Jan H., "Im Zentrum des Massenmordes. Ernst Zierke im Vernichtungslager Bełżec", in: Wojciech Lenarczyk (Ed.), KZ-Verbrechen. Beiträge zur Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager. Metropol, Berlin 2007. ISBN 978-3938690505. (in German)
  • Hilberg, Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews, Yale University Press, 2003, revised hardcover edition, ISBN 0300095570.
  • Klee, Ernst; Dressen, Willi; Riess, Volker (1991). The "Good Old Days" – The Holocaust as Seen by its Perpetrators and Bystanders. Translated by Deborah Burnstone. Konecky Konecky. ISBN 978-1568521336.
  • Musiał, Bogdan (2000). The Origins of 'Operation Reinhard': The Decision-Making Process for the Mass Murder of the Jews in the Generalgouvernment. (in) Holocaust: From the persecution of the Jews to mass murder By David Cesarani and Sarah Kavanaugh. Translated by William Templer. Yad Vashem Studies, No. 28 (pp. 113–153). ISBN 978-0415275118. Retrieved 9 May 2015.
  • O'Neil, Robin (2009), Bełżec: Stepping Stone to Genocide Complete Book and Research by Robin O'Neil hosted by JewishGen.org OCLC 779194210.
  • Rückerl, Adalbert (ed.), Nationalsozialistische Vernichtungslager im Spiegel deutscher Strafprozesse. Bełżec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno, 2nd ed., dtv, München 1978, ISBN 342302904X. (in German)
  • Reder, Rudolf, Bełżec, Kraków, 1946
  • Witte, Peter; and Tyas, Stephen (2001), "A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of Jews during ‘Einsatz Reinhardt 1942'", Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 15, No. 3, Winter 2001, ISBN 0199225060.
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External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Belzec extermination camp.
  • Concentration camps of Nazi Germany on YouTube

March 17, 2023
belzec, extermination, camp, coordinates, 37167, 45750, 37167, 45750, belzec, redirects, here, nearby, village, bełżec, village, belzec, english, polish, ˈbɛu, ʐɛt, nazi, german, extermination, camp, built, purpose, implementing, secretive, operation, reinhard. Coordinates 50 22 18 N 23 27 27 E 50 37167 N 23 45750 E 50 37167 23 45750 Belzec redirects here For the nearby village see Belzec village Belzec English ˈ b ɛ l z ɛ k or ˈ b ɛ l ʒ ɛ t s Polish ˈbɛu ʐɛt s was a Nazi German extermination camp 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 which in total entailed the murder of about 6 million Jews in the Holocaust 2 The camp operated from 17 March 1942 to the end of June 1943 3 It was situated about 500 m 1 600 ft south of the local railroad station of Belzec in the new Lublin District of the General Government territory of German occupied Poland 4 The burning of exhumed corpses on five open air grids and bone crushing continued until March 1943 5 BelzecNazi extermination campJews from Lublin District during deportation to Belzec Location of Belzec lower centre on the map of German extermination camps marked with black and white skulls Borders of the Second Polish Republic before World War IIKnown forAnnihilation of Europe s Jews in the HolocaustLocationNear Belzec General Government German occupied Poland Built byRichard Thomalla layout Lorenz Hackenholt gas chambers Operated bySS TotenkopfverbandeCommandantChristian Wirth Dec 1941 Aug 1942 Gottlieb Hering Aug 1942 June 1943 First built1 November 1941 March 1942Operational17 March 1942 end of June 1943Number of gas chambers3 later 6 1 InmatesPolish German Ukrainian and Austrian JewsKilled434 508 600 000Notable inmatesRudolf RederBetween 430 000 and 500 000 Jews are believed to have been murdered by the SS at Belzec 3 6 It was the third deadliest extermination camp exceeded only by Treblinka and Auschwitz 7 Only seven Jews performing slave labour with the camp s Sonderkommando survived World War II 5 and only Rudolf Reder became known 8 thanks to his official postwar testimony 9 The lack of viable witnesses able to testify about the camp s operation is the primary reason why Belzec is little known despite the victim number count 9 Israeli historian David Silberklang writes that Belzec was perhaps the place most representative of the totality and finality of the Nazi plans for Jews 10 Contents 1 Background 1 1 Camp construction 1 2 Experience in the Aktion T4 euthanasia program 1 3 Concealment of camp s purpose 2 Camp operation 3 Command structure 3 1 Camp guards 4 Gas chambers 5 Closure and dismantlement 6 Victims 7 Post war 8 Archeological studies 9 Survivors 10 See also 11 References 11 1 Informational notes 11 2 Citations 11 3 Bibliography 12 External linksBackgroundIn the Second Polish Republic the village of Belzec was situated between the two major cities in the southeastern part of the country including Lublin 76 kilometres 47 mi northwest of Belzec and Lwow to the southeast German Lemberg now Lviv Ukraine with the largest Jewish populations in the region Belzec fell within the German zone of occupation in accordance with the German Soviet Pact against Poland Originally Jewish forced labour was brought into the area in April 1940 for the construction of military defence facilities of the German strategic plan codenamed Operation Otto against the Soviet advance beyond their common frontier following the Soviet invasion of 1939 11 Deportation of Jews to Belzec from Zamosc April 1942 In the territory of the so called Nisko reservation the city of Lublin became the hub of early Nazi transfer of about 95 000 German Austrian and Polish Jews expelled from the West and the General Government area 12 The prisoners were put to work by the Schutzstaffel SS in the construction of anti tank ditches Burggraben along the transitory Nazi Soviet border 13 The Burggraben project was abandoned with the onset of Operation Barbarossa 3 14 On 13 October 1941 Heinrich Himmler gave the SS and Police Leader of Lublin SS Brigadefuhrer Odilo Globocnik an order to start Germanizing the area around Zamosc 11 which entailed the removal of Jews from the areas of future settlement 15 Camp construction Main article The Holocaust in Poland The decision to begin work on the first stationary gas chambers in the General Government preceded the actual Wannsee Conference by three months 11 The first steps were taken between mid September and mid October 1941 16 and the construction began around 1 November 17 The site near Belzec was chosen for several reasons it was situated on the border between the Lublin District and the German District of Galicia formed after Operation Barbarossa It could process the Jews of both regions 11 The ease of transportation was secured by the railroad junction at nearby Rawa Ruska and the highway between Lublin Stadt and Lemberg 4 The northern boundary of the planned killing centre consisted of an anti tank trench constructed a year earlier The ditch excavated originally for military purposes was likely to serve as the first mass grave Globocnik brought in Obersturmfuhrer Richard Thomalla who was a civil engineer by profession and the camp construction expert in the SS Work had commenced in early November 1941 using local builders overseen by a squad of Trawniki guards The installation resembling a railway transit point for the purpose of forced labour was finished before Christmas It featured insulated barracks for showering among several other structures Some local men were released The SS completed the work in February 1942 by fitting in the tank engine and the exhaust piping systems for gassing The trial killings were performed in early March 18 19 The Final Solution was formulated at the Wannsee Conference in late January 1942 by the leading proponents of gassing who were unaware of Belzec s existence 8 including Wilhelm Dolpheid Ludwig Losacker Helmut Tanzmann and Governor Otto Wachter 19 Dolpheid negotiated with the SS Oberfuhrer Viktor Brack in Berlin for the use of the Aktion T4 personnel in the process 19 Only two months later on 17 March 1942 the daily gassing operations at Belzec extermination camp began with the T4 leadership brought in from Germany under the guise of Organisation Todt OT 11 20 Experience in the Aktion T4 euthanasia program The three commandants of the camp including Kriminalpolizei officers SS Sturmbannfuhrer Christian Wirth and SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Gottlieb Hering had been involved in the forced euthanasia program since 1940 in common with almost all of their German staff thereafter 19 Wirth had the leading position as the supervisor of six extermination hospitals in the Reich Hering was the non medical chief of the Sonnenstein gassing facility in Saxony as well as at the Hadamar Euthanasia Centre 19 Christian Wirth had been a killing expert from the beginning as participant of the first T 4 gassing of handicapped people at the Brandenburg Euthanasia Centre He was therefore an obvious choice to be the first commandant of the first stationary extermination camp of Operation Reinhard in the General Government It was his proposal to use the exhaust gas emitted by the internal combustion engine of a motorcar as the killing agent instead of the bottled carbon monoxide because no delivery from outside the camp would be required as in the case of the T 4 method However Wirth decided that the comparable technology of mobile gas vans used at Chelmno extermination camp before December 1941 and by the Einsatzgruppen in the East 21 had proven insufficient for the projected number of victims from the Holocaust trains arriving at the new railway approach ramp 22 Wirth developed his method on the basis of experience he had gained in the fixed gas chambers of Aktion T4 Even though Zyklon B became broadly available later on Wirth decided against it Zyklon B was produced by a private firm for both Birkenau and Majdanek nearby but their infrastructure differed Belzec was an Operation Reinhard camp meant to circumvent the problems of supply and instead rely on a system of extermination based on ordinary and readily available killing agents For economic and practical reasons Wirth had almost the same carbon monoxide gas used in T 4 generated with the torque of a large engine Although Holocaust witnesses testimonies differ as to the type of fuel Erich Fuchs postwar affidavit indicates that most probably it was a petrol engine with a system of pipes delivering exhaust fumes into the gas chambers 23 For very small transports of Jews and Gypsies over a short distance a minimised version of the gas van technology was also used in Belzec The T 4 participant and first operator of the gas chambers SS Hauptscharfuhrer Lorenz Hackenholt 24 rebuilt an Opel Blitz post office vehicle with the help of a local craftsman into a small gas van 23 The killing process using the lethal carbon monoxide often failed to be completed quickly inflicting horrific suffering on the victims as they suffocated to death The guards jokingly referred to the killing site as the Hackenholt Foundation 25 Concealment of camp s purpose Polish language sign Reads Attention All belongings must be handed in at the counter except for money documents and other valuables which you must keep with you Shoes should be tied together in pairs and placed in the area marked for shoes Afterward one must go completely naked to the showers Belzec processing zone consisted of two sections surrounded by a high barbed wire fence camouflaged with cut fir branches Camp 1 which included the victims unloading area with two undressing barracks further up as well as Camp 2 which contained the gas chambers and the mass graves dug by the crawler excavator 26 The two zones were completely screened from each other and connected only by a narrow corridor called der Schlauch or the Tube 3 All arriving Jews disembarked from the trains at a platform in the reception zone They were met by SS Scharfuhrer Fritz Jirmann Irmann standing at the podium with a loudspeaker 26 and were told by the Sonderkommando men that they had arrived at a transit camp 27 To ready themselves for the communal shower women and children were separated from men 3 The disrobed new arrivals were forced to run along a fenced off path to the gas chambers leaving them no time to absorb where they were The process was conducted as quickly as possible amid constant screaming by the Germans 3 At times a handful of Jews were selected at the ramp to perform all the manual work involved with extermination 3 The wooden gas chambers which were built with double walls that were insulated by earth packed between them were disguised as the shower barracks so that the victims would not realise the true purpose of the facility The gassing itself which took about 30 minutes was conducted by Hackenholt with the Ukrainian guards and a Jewish aide 28 Removing the bodies from the gas chambers burying them sorting and repairing the victims clothing for shipping was performed by Sonderkommando work details 28 The workshops for the Jewish prisoners and the barracks for the Ukrainian guards were separated from the processing zone behind an embankment of the old Otto Line with the barbed wire on top 3 Most Jews from the corpse unit the Totenjuden were murdered periodically and replaced by new arrivals so that they would neither organise a revolt nor survive to tell about the camp s purpose 3 The German SS and the administration were housed in two cottages outside the camp 3 Camp operation Aerial photograph of Belzec camp perimeter taken in 1944 by the Luftwaffe a common practice with murder factories after clean up making sure that it is safe to abandon Known structures are gone except for the brick and mortar garage and auto shop for the SS whose foundations still exist today lower left Across the fence left separated from the main camp the Hiwi guards accommodations with kitchen as well as sorting and packing yard for victims possessions Dismantled barracks can still be seen surrounded by walking sand The railway unloading platform with two parallel ramps marked with red arrow A smaller arrow shows the holding pen for Jews still waiting to be processed Location of gas chambers marked with a cross Undressing and hair cropping area marked with rectangle with fenced out Sluice into the woods obstructing the view of the surroundings Cremation pyres and ash pits yellow upper half The history of Belzec can be divided into two or three periods of operation The first phase from 17 March to the end of June 1942 was marked by the existence of smaller gas chambers housed in barracks constructed of planks and insulated with sand and rubber Belzec was the first killing centre of Operation Reinhard 3 There were many technical difficulties with the early attempts at mass extermination The gassing installation was imperfect and usually only one or two rooms were working causing a backlog In the first three months 80 000 people were murdered and buried in pits covered with a shallow layer of earth The victims were Jews deported from the Lublin Ghetto and its vicinity The original three gas chambers were found insufficient for completing their purpose 11 The second phase of extermination began in July 1942 when new gas chambers were built of brick and mortar on a lightweight foundation 29 thus enabling the facility to process Jews of the two largest agglomerations nearby including the Krakow and Lwow Ghettos The wooden gas chambers were dismantled The new building was 24 meters long and 10 meters wide and had six gas chambers insulated with cement walls 27 It could handle over 1 000 victims at a time The design was soon imitated by the other two Operation Reinhard extermination camps Sobibor and Treblinka 11 There was a hand painted sign on the new building that read Stiftung Hackenholt or Hackenholt Foundation named after the SS man who designed it 30 Until December 1942 at least 350 000 to 400 000 Jews were murdered in the new gas chambers 11 One Wehrmacht sergeant at the train station in Rzeszow Wilhelm Cornides recorded in his diary a conversation with a German policeman on 30 August 1942 The Bahnschutzpolizei told him trains filled with Jews pass almost daily through the railway yards and leave immediately on the way to the camp They return swept clean most often the same evening 31 The last transport of Jews arrived at Belzec on 11 December 1942 11 The buried remains often swelled in the heat as a result of putrefaction and the escape of gases The surface layer of soil split In October 1942 the exhumation and burning of all corpses was ordered to cover up the crime on direct orders from SS Obergruppenfuhrer Odilo Globocnik the deputy of Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler in Berlin The bodies were placed on pyres made from rail tracks splashed with petrol and burned over wood The bones were collected and crushed The last period of camp s operation continued until June 1943 when the area was ploughed over and disguised as a farm 3 Command structureFurther information Belzec trial The camp s first commandant Christian Wirth lived very close to the camp in a house which also served as a kitchen for the SS as well as an armoury 32 He later moved to the Lublin airfield camp to oversee Operation Reinhard till the end After the German takeover of Italy in 1943 he was transferred by Globocnik to serve along with him in his hometown of Trieste 33 They set up the San Sabba concentration and transit camp there killing up to 5 000 prisoners and sending 69 Holocaust trains to Auschwitz Wirth received the Iron Cross in April 1944 The following month he was killed by partisans whilst travelling in an open top car in what is now western Slovenia After the camp s closure his successor there SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Gottlieb Hering was transferred to Poniatowa concentration camp temporarily until the massacres of the Aktion Erntefest and later followed Wirth and Globocnik to Trieste 34 After the war ended Hering served for a short time as the chief of Criminal Police of Heilbronn in the American zone and died in autumn 1945 in a hospital Lorenz Hackenholt survived the defeat of Germany but disappeared in 1945 without a trace 23 Belzec extermination camp SS staff 1942 from right to left Heinrich Barbl Artur Dachsel Lorenz Hackenholt Ernst Zierke Karl Gringers unknown Reinhold Feiks Karl Alfred Schluch and Friedrich Tauscher front left Only seven former members of the SS Sonderkommando Belzec were indicted 20 years later in Munich Of these just one Josef Oberhauser leader of the SS guard platoon was brought to trial in 1964 and sentenced to four years and six months in prison of which he served half before being released 35 Camp guards Belzec camp guards included German Volksdeutsche and up to 120 former Soviet prisoners of war mostly Ukrainians organised into four platoons 5 27 Following Operation Barbarossa all of them underwent special training at the Trawniki SS camp division before they were posted as Hiwis German abbreviation for Hilfswilligen lit those willing to help in the concentration camps as guards and gas chamber operators 36 They provided the bulk of Wachmanner collaborators in all major killing sites of the Final Solution 37 38 Gas chambersMain article Gerstein Report A detailed description of how the gas chambers at Belzec were managed came in 1945 from Kurt Gerstein Head of the Technical Disinfection Services who used to deliver Zyklon B to Auschwitz from the company Degesch during the Holocaust 39 In his postwar report written at the Rottweil hotel while in the French custody Gerstein described his visit to Belzec on 19 or 18 August 1942 30 He witnessed there the unloading of 45 cattle cars crowded with 6 700 Jews deported from the Lwow Ghetto less than a hundred kilometres away 40 of whom 1 450 were already dead on arrival from suffocation and thirst The remaining new arrivals were marched naked in batches to the gas chambers beaten with whips to squeeze tighter inside 41 Unterscharfuhrer Hackenholt was making great efforts to get the engine running But it doesn t go Captain Wirth comes up I can see he is afraid because I am present at a disaster Yes I see it all and I wait My stopwatch showed it all 50 minutes 70 minutes and the diesel did not start a The people wait inside the gas chambers In vain They can be heard weeping like in the synagogue says Professor Pfannenstiel b his eyes glued to a window in the wooden door Furious Captain Wirth lashes the Ukrainian assisting Hackenholt twelve thirteen times in the face After 2 hours and 49 minutes the stopwatch recorded it all the diesel started Up to that moment the people locked in those four crowded chambers were still alive four times 750 persons in four times 45 cubic meters c Another 25 minutes elapsed Many were already dead that could be seen through the small window because an electric lamp inside lit up the chamber for a few moments After 28 minutes only a few were still alive Finally after 32 minutes all were dead Dentists hammered out gold teeth bridges and crowns In the midst of them stood Captain Wirth He was in his element and showing me a large can full of teeth he said See for yourself the weight of that gold It s only from yesterday and the day before You can t imagine what we find every day dollars diamonds gold You ll see for yourself Kurt Gerstein Gerstein Report 46 Closure and dismantlement Belzec mausoleum Unloading ramp and cremation rails historical artefacts Portion of the memorial in Belzec Cemented rails built in place of the original unloading ramp lead in all directions from which the Jews were brought in 47 The field of crushed stone serves as grave marker the entire perimeter contains human ashes mixed with sand 47 In the last phase of the camp operations all prior mass graves were unearthed by a mechanical digger It was the result of direct orders from the Nazi leadership possibly from Himmler soon after the Soviet Katyn massacre of 22 000 Polish soldiers was discovered in Russia At Katyn the German led exhumations by the international Katyn Commission revealed details of the mass murder by examining preserved bodies 48 The Germans attempted to use the commission s results to drive a wedge between the Allies 49 All corpses buried at Belzec were secretly exhumed and then gradually cremated on long open air pyres part of the country wide plan known as the Sonderaktion 1005 Bone fragments were pulverised and mixed with the ashes to hide the evidence of mass murder The site was planted with small firs and wild lupines and all camp structures were dismantled 3 34 The last train with 300 Jewish Sonderkommando prisoners who performed the clean up operation departed to Sobibor extermination camp for gassing in late June 1943 They were told that they were being evacuated to Germany instead Any equipment that could be reused was taken by the German and Ukrainian personnel to the concentration camp Majdanek Wirth s house and the neighbouring SS building which had been the property of the Polish Railway before the war were not demolished 34 After locals started digging for valuables in Belzec the Germans installed a permanent guard so that their mass murder would not come to light 50 51 SS personnel with work commandos turned the camp into a fake farm with one Ukrainian SS guard assigned to settle there permanently with his family 34 This model for guarding and disguising murder sites was also adopted at the Treblinka and Sobibor death camps 34 Victims 8 page from Raczynski s Note with Treblinka Belzec and Sobibor extermination camps part of official note of Polish government in exile to Anthony Eden 10 December 1942 The historian Eugeniusz Szrojt in his 1947 study published by the Bulletin of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland Biuletyn Glownej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Niemieckich w Polsce 1947 following an investigation by GKBZNwP which began in 1945 estimated the number of people murdered in Belzec at 600 000 47 This number became widely accepted in the literature Raul Hilberg gave a figure of 550 000 52 Yitzhak Arad accepted 600 000 as minimum 36 and the sum in his table of Belzec deportations by the city exceeded 500 000 36 Jozef Marszalek calculated 500 000 53 British historian Robin O Neil once gave an estimate of about 800 000 based on his investigations at the site 54 German historians Dieter Pohl and Peter Witte 55 gave an estimate of 480 000 to 540 000 Michael Tregenza stated that it would have been possible to have buried up to one million victims on the site although the true number of people murdered is probably around half that number 56 This document the so called Hofle Telegram confirms 434 508 Jews were murdered at Belzec in 1942 The crucial piece of evidence came from the declassified Hofle Telegram sent to Berlin on 11 January 1943 by Operation Reinhard s Chief of Staff Hermann Hofle It was published in 2001 by Stephen Tyas and Peter Witte 55 The radio telegram indicated that 434 508 Jews were deported to Belzec through 31 December 1942 based on numbers shared by the SS with the state run Deutsche Reichsbahn DRG 55 The camp had ceased to operate for mass murder by then The clean up commando of up to 500 prisoners remained in the camp disinterring the bodies and burning them The Sonderkommando was transported to Sobibor extermination camp around August 1943 and murdered on arrival In our view wrote Pohl amp Witte in 2001 there is no evidence to justify a figure higher than that of 600 000 victims 57 The Holocaust train records were notoriously incomplete as revealed by postwar analysis by the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes against the Polish Nation 58 The difference between the low end figure and other estimates can be explained by the lack of exact and detailed sources on the deportations statistics Thus Y Arad writes that he had to rely in part on Yizkor books of Jewish ghettos which were not guaranteed to give the exact estimates of the numbers of deportees He also relied on partial German railway documentation from which the number of trains could be gleaned Some assumptions had to be made about the number of persons per each Holocaust train 36 The Deutsche Reichsbahn calculations were predetermined with the carrying capacity of each trainset set up at 50 boxcars each loaded with 50 prisoners which was routinely disregarded by the SS cramming trains up to 200 capacity for the same price 12 The Hofle s numbers were repeated in Korherr Report suggesting their common origin Other sources like Westermann s report 59 contain the exact data about the number of deported persons but only estimates of the numbers of those who died in transit 59 Post war Symbolic death road portion of the memorial in Belzec Underground passage built in place of former Sluice into the gas chambers evokes the feelings of no escape 47 Belzec extermination camp memorial During the construction of the Mausoleum trees planted by the SS were removed and only the oaks that witnessed the genocide were retained 47 The ohel of the Belzec mausoleum Belzec extermination camp museum Grave robbing at the site resumed after the German guard fled for the approaching Red Army 50 In 1945 the Lublin District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes conducted an investigation into the crimes in Belzec The mass graves at the site were dug up by graverobbers seeking gold and valuables 60 In 1945 provincial authorities and the Tomaszow Lubelski Jewish Committee discussed the continuing plunder of the site In 1945 Szmul Pelc the chair of the committee of the Jewish Committee was murdered by local graverobbers 61 Investigations of grave digging continued through the late 1950s While Lublin District Commission published the results of their investigation in 1947 the site itself continued to be neglected and memory of the site was suppressed as very few of the camp s victims were Polish and few of the camp s primarily Jewish victims survived 60 Beginning in the second half of the 1950s the pursuit by Germany itself of the German perpetrators revived interest in the site The Soviet trials of Russian camp personnel held in Kiev and Krasnodar in the early 1960s soon followed 62 In the 1960s the grounds of the former Belzec camp were fenced off The first monuments were erected although the area did not correspond to the actual size of the camp during its operation due to lack of proper evidence and modern forensic research Some commercial development took place in areas formerly belonging to it Also its remote location on the Polish Soviet border meant that few people visited the site before the revolutions of 1989 and the return of democracy It was largely forgotten and poorly maintained 62 Following the collapse of the Communist dictatorship in 1989 the situation began to change As the number of visitors to Poland interested in Holocaust sites increased more of them came to Belzec In the 1990s the camp appeared badly neglected even though it was cleaned by students from Belzec school 62 In the late 1990s extensive investigations were carried out on the camp grounds to determine precisely the camp s extent and provide greater understanding of its operation Buildings constructed after the war on the camp grounds were removed In 2004 Belzec became a new branch of the Majdanek State Museum New official monuments commemorating the camp s victims were unveiled 63 One of the prime benefactors behind the new memorial at Belzec was Miles Lerman an American Holocaust survivor whose own parents were murdered in Belzec raising approximately 5 million dollars with the help of the Polish government and the American Jewish Committee Another prominent Holocaust survivor with a connection to Belzec is philanthropist Anita Ekstein former national chair of March of the Living Canada Anita Ekstein was born in the Lviv area and was hidden as a child by Righteous Poles during the Holocaust 64 Her mother Ethel Helfgott was among the victims in Belzec 65 Anita Ekstein has led many groups of students on educational trips to Poland where she shares her Holocaust story She first visited Belzec in 2005 a year after the new memorial opened and discovered her mother s name inscribed on the memorial wall on Mother s Day 66 Archeological studiesFrom late 1997 until early 1998 a thorough archaeological survey of the site was conducted by a team led by two Polish scientists including Andrzej Kola director of the Underwater Archaeological Department at the University of Torun and Mieczyslaw Gora senior curator of the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography in Lodz pl The team identified the railway sidings and remains of a number of buildings They also found 33 mass graves the largest of which had an area of 480 m2 5 200 sq ft and was 4 8 m 16 ft deep The total volume of these mass graves was estimated at 21 000 m3 0 74 million cu ft 29 Air photo analysis suggests that these 33 mass graves were not the only graves at Belzec extermination camp 67 All graves discovered by archaeologists contained large amounts of human cremation remains and 10 graves also contained unburned human remains which Prof Kola described as follows Deposition of corpses in the water bearing layers or in very damp structure of the ground just above that layer with the difficulty of air penetration because of the depth caused the changes of the deposited bodies into adipocere In some graves the layer of corpses reached the thickness of ca 2 00m 29 SurvivorsIt is believed that some 50 Jews might have escaped from Belzec and only seven were still alive at the war s end An unknown number of prisoners jumped out from the moving Holocaust trains on the way to the camp at their own peril 5 The railway embankments used to be lined with bodies 31 There were only two Jewish escapees from the camp who shared their testimony with the Polish Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi German Crimes They were Rudolf Reder and Chaim Hirszman While Reder submitted a deposition in January 1946 in Krakow Hirszman was assassinated in March 1946 at his home by so called cursed soldiers from the anti communist resistance organisation TOW Following the war s end Hirszman had joined MBP a secret police organisation created by the new Stalinist regime in Poland to crush the anti communist underground MBP used methods including torture extrajudicial executions and the deportation to Siberia of over 50 000 political prisoners 68 Hirszman was murdered before he was able to give a full account of his experiences at the camp 69 Rudolf Reder summarised his account of the Belzec camp imprisonment in the book Belzec published in 1946 by the Jewish Historical Committee in Krakow with Preface by Nella Rost his editor and literary helper The book was illustrated with a map by Jozef Bau a Holocaust survivor who studied at the Academy of Fine Arts It was reprinted in 1999 by the Auschwitz Birkenau State Museum with translation by Margaret M Rubel 70 In 1960 Reder s testimony became part of the German preparations for the Belzec trial in Munich against eight former SS members of the extermination camp personnel The accused were set free except for Oberhauser who was sentenced to 4 years of imprisonment and released after serving half of his sentence 71 See alsoBelzec trial of eight former SS staff of Belzec extermination camp in the mid 1960s Munich Chelmno trials of the Chelmno extermination camp personnel held in Poland and in Germany decided almost twenty years apart Grojanowski Report by Chelmno prisoner Szlama Ber Winer List of Nazi concentration camps Majdanek trials the longest Nazi war crimes trial in history The Holocaust in PolandReferencesInformational notes Affidavit of SS Scharfuhrer Erich Fuchs 8 4 63 208 AR Z 251 59 vol 9 pp 1784 f in the Sobibor Bolender trial about the installation of the gas chambers would indicate that the engine disassembled from a tank or a lorry might have been fueled by gasoline or diesel 42 43 Before World War II Pfannenstiel headed the ominous German Society for Race Hygiene Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Rassenhygiene as Professor of Hygiene at the University of Marburg in Germany leading to the development of T4 programme some time later 44 The bricks and mortar building with the new gas chambers had six cubicles each about 25 sq m It is almost impossible to squeeze such a large crowd i e 750 people into such a small space The total of 750 victims per gas chamber was provided by the camp s commandant Christian Wirth to a company of high ranking SS officers who visited the camp in the middle of Aug 1942 including Gerstein himself The above figure was stated in his Gerstein Report at face value from End Notes by Robin O Neil 45 Citations Arad 1999 p 73 Yad Vashem Aktion Reinhard PDF Shoah Resource Center Retrieved 1 July 2013 a b c d e f g h i j k l m The Holocaust Encyclopedia Belzec United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archived from the original Internet Archive on 7 January 2012 Retrieved 10 May 2015 a b MMPwB Decyzja o podjeciu akcji Reinhardt Muzeum Miejsce Pamieci w Belzcu Oddzial Panstwowego Muzeum na Majdanku archived from the original on 20 August 2009 a b c d ARC 26 August 2006 Belzec Camp History Aktion Reinhard Archived from the original on 25 December 2005 Retrieved 27 April 2015 Belzec Death Camp Memorial Poland Center for Holocaust amp Genocide Studies University of Minnesota Retrieved 10 May 2015 Snyder Timothy 16 July 2009 Holocaust The Ignored Reality The New York Review Retrieved 8 April 2022 a b Bergen Doris 2003 War amp genocide a concise history of the Holocaust Critical issues in history Testimony of Rudolf Reder Rowman amp Littlefield p 185 ISBN 978 0847696314 a b Belzec Death Camp Remember Me Alphabetical Listing Holocaust Education amp Archive Research Team 2007 Retrieved 27 April 2015 Silberklang David 2013 Gates of Tears the Holocaust in the Lublin District Yad Vashem p 16 ISBN 978 9653084643 a b c d e f g h i Historia Niemieckiego Obozu Zaglady w Belzcu History of the Belzec extermination camp in Polish National Belzec Museum amp Monument of Martyrology Muzeum Miejsce Pamieci w Belzcu archived from the original on 29 October 2015 retrieved 14 March 2014 a b Robert Rozett Shmuel Spector 2013 Encyclopedia of the Holocaust Routledge p 47 ISBN 978 1135969509 Schwindt Barbara 2005 Das Konzentrations und Vernichtungslager Majdanek Funktionswandel im Kontext der Endlosung Konigshausen amp Neumann p 52 ISBN 978 3826031236 Browning Christopher R 1995 The Path to Genocide Essays on Launching the Final Solution Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521558786 Musial 2000 pp 192 194 Browning Christopher R 1994 The Nazi Decision to Commit Mass Murder Three Interpretations The Euphoria of Victory and the Final Solution Summer Fall 1941 German Studies Review 17 3 477 doi 10 2307 1431894 ISSN 0149 7952 JSTOR 1431894 Gerlach Christian 17 March 2016 The Extermination of the European Jews Cambridge University Press p 74 ISBN 978 0521880787 Kenneth McVay Yad Vashem 2015 1984 The Construction of the Belzec Extermination Camp The Final Solution Operation Reinhard The Camps of Belzec Sobibor amp Treblinka Jewish Virtual Library Retrieved 25 April 2015 a b c d e Aktion Reinhard and the Emergence of The Final Solution Deathcamps org 2014 Retrieved 4 March 2014 The Gerstein Report Der Gerstein Bericht im NS Archiv Annefrank dk 26 May 1945 Archived from the original on 3 February 2014 Retrieved 4 March 2014 Klee Dressen amp Riess 1991 Chapter 3 A new and better method of killing had to be found The gas vans p 69 Jack Fischel 1998 The Holocaust Greenwood Publishing Group pp 46 47 175 ISBN 978 0313298790 a b c Klee Dressen amp Riess 1991 pp 230 237 241 296 Michael Tregenza 2000 The Disappearance of SS Hauptscharfuhrer Lorenz Hackenholt A Report on the 1959 63 West German Police Search for Lorenz Hackenholt the Gas Chamber Expert of the Aktion Reinhard Extermination Camps Mazel on line library Internet Archive Harran Marilyn ed 2000 1942 The Final Solution The Holocaust Chronicle 1st ed Publications International p 308 ISBN 978 0785329633 a b USHMM 2015 Testimony of Bronislaw Ragan USHMM Collections Retrieved 29 April 2015 See also sketch by Jan Krupa and Bronislaw Ragan made at the request of the Belzec Mayor circa 1971 a b c Reder Rudolf Belzec Panstwowe Muzeum Oswiecim Brzezinka ed by Franciszek Piper ISBN 8390771535 a b Klee Dressen amp Riess 1991 Chapter 4 The camp had clean sanitary facilities pp 238 244 a b c Andrzej Kola 2015 2000 Belzec The Nazi Camp for Jews in the Light of Archaeological Sources Translated from Polish by Ewa Jozefowicz and Mateusz Jozefowicz Warsaw Washington The Council for the Protection of Memory of Combat and Martyrdom The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ISBN 978 8390559063 Retrieved 3 May 2015 Also in Archeologists reveal new secrets of Holocaust Reuters News 21 July 1998 a b Gerstein Kurt Report dated 4 May 1945 excerpted translated and reprinted in Klee The Good Old Days page 242 a b SJ H E A R T 2007 Belzec Death Camp Eyewitness Report Wilhelm Cornides HolocaustResearchProject org Retrieved 8 May 2015 Sources Martin Gilbert Peter Longerich Max Freiherr Du Prel Belzec the house of Christian Wirth Archived from the original on 17 November 2021 Retrieved 4 March 2014 via YouTube San Sabba 2009 Risiera di San Sabba History and Museum PDF With Selected Bibliography 3 Archived from the original PDF on 7 September 2012 Retrieved 2 May 2015 a b c d e Arad 1999 pp 371 372 Sentence by the First Munich District Court Belzec Prozess Urteil LG Munchen I in German Retrieved 9 August 2013 a b c d Arad 1999 pp 52 177 USHMM 2014 Holocaust Encyclopedia Trawniki United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Washington DC Mgr Stanislaw Jablonski 1927 2002 Hitlerowski oboz w Trawnikach The camp history in Polish Trawniki official website Retrieved 30 April 2013 Yahil Leni 1991 The Holocaust The Fate of European Jewry 1932 1945 pp 356 357 ISBN 978 0195045239 Holocaust Encyclopedia Belzec Chronology United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 2013 David Cymet 2012 History vs Apologetics The Holocaust the Third Reich and the Catholic Church Lexington Books p 274 ISBN 978 0739132951 Retrieved 3 May 2015 Arad 1999 p 31 Klee Dressen amp Riess 1991 p 230 Klee Dressen amp Riess 1991 p 238 O Neil Robin 2011 Appendix 5 Rudolf Reder s Belzec The End Product of The Rabka Four s Activities in Distrikt Galicia The Rabka Four Instruments of Genocide and Grand Larceny Poland Spiderwize Publishing p 237 OCLC 796270628 Retrieved 12 May 2015 via JewishGen org Arad 1999 p 102 Another translation of Gerstein s testimony can be found at Klee Dressen amp Riess 1991 p 242 a b c d e Jacek Malczynski 19 January 2009 Drzewa zywe pomniki w Muzeum Miejscu Pamieci w Belzcu Trees as living monuments at Belzec Wspolczesna Przeszlosc 125 140 Poznan 2009 39 46 Retrieved 8 August 2013 International Katyn Commission 30 April 1943 Commission Findings Transcript Smolensk 30 April 1943 Warsaw Uprising by Project InPosterum Retrieved 15 November 2013 Kuzniar Plota Malgorzata 30 November 2004 Decision to commence investigation into Katyn Massacre Departmental Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation Retrieved 26 August 2013 a b Gross Jan Tomasz Gross Irena Grudzinska 2012 Golden Harvest Events at the Periphery of the Holocaust Oxford University Press pp 22 26 ISBN 978 0199731671 Spector Robert Melvin 2005 World Without Civilization Mass Murder and the Holocaust History and Analysis Volume 1 University Press of America p 435 ISBN 978 0761829638 Raul Hilberg The Destruction of the European Jews Yale University Press 2003 revised hardcover edition ISBN 0300095570 Joseph Poprzeczny 2004 Odilo Globocnik Hitler s Man in the East Notes to Chapter VII Google eBook McFarland p 400 ISBN 978 0786481460 Retrieved 9 August 2013 Robin O Neil A Reassessment Resettlement Transports to Belzec March December 1942 JewishGen Yizkor Book Project Retrieved 9 August 2013 a b c Witte Peter Tyas Stephen Winter 2001 A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of Jews during Einsatz Reinhardt 1942 Holocaust and Genocide Studies 15 3 468 486 doi 10 1093 hgs 15 3 468 Tregenza Michael 1998 Report on the Archeological Investigation at the Site of the Former NAZI Extermination Camp in Belzec Poland 1997 98 Lublin Pohl Dieter Witte Peter 2001 The number of victims of belzec extermination camp A faulty reassessment East European Jewish Affairs 31 15 22 doi 10 1080 13501670108577932 S2CID 162068368 The Armia Krajowa communiques detailing the number of trains arriving at Operation Reinhard death camps augmented by the demographic information regarding the number of people deported from each ghetto were published by the Polish Underground State through the Biuletyn Informacyjny newspaper BI on behalf of the exiled Polish government in London Grzegorz Mazur 2013 The ZWZ AK Bureau of Information and Propaganda Essays and Articles Polish Home Army Ex Servicemen Association London Branch Retrieved 1 December 2013 a b For the Westermann s Report see Martin Gilbert April 1999 Holocaust Journey Traveling in Search of the Past p 217 ISBN 978 0231109659 an official wartime report in which Lieutenant Westermann a German police officer in the reserve describes the deportation of 8 000 Jews from the Eastern Galician towns in a single thirty wagon train on September 10 1942 after more than three days on this journey without food or water reached Belzec 2 000 of the 8 000 deportees were dead on arrival a b Dawne upamietnienie pol wieku zapomnienia Half a century of forgetting Camp history and photographs Oboz Zaglady w Belzcu Belzec extermination camp museum 2005 Archived from the original Internet Archive 2009 capture on 2 February 2009 Retrieved 9 February 2013 Kopciowski A Anti Jewish Incidents in the Lublin Region in the Early Years after World War II Zaglada Zydow Studia i Materialy Holocaust Studies and Materials 3 2007 188 a b c Dawne upamietnienie pol wieku zapomnienia Half a century of forgetting Camp history and photographs Oboz Zaglady w Belzcu Belzec extermination camp museum 2005 Archived from the original Internet Archive 2009 capture on 2 February 2009 Retrieved 9 February 2013 Kalendarium Powstanie Panstwowego Muzeum Creation of the Museum Panstwowe Muzeum na Majdanku Archived from the original on 13 February 2011 Retrieved 9 April 2013 March of the Living Archived from the original on 11 June 2014 Yad Vashem March of the Living PDF Alex Bay The Reconstruction of Belzec https web archive org web 20150905054338 http www holocaust history org belzec Piotrowski Tadeusz 2007 Poland s holocaust p 131 ISBN 978 0786429134 Dariusz Libionka 2015 Oboz zaglady w Belzcu Death camp in Belzec Jewish org pl Portal Spolecznosci Zydowskiej Panstwowe Muzeum na Majdanku Majdanek State Museum Archived from the original on 5 November 2014 Retrieved 11 May 2015 Oboz zaglady w Belzcu w relacjach ocalonych i zeznaniach polskich swiadkow Testimonies of survivors and witnesses SearchWorks catalog 2015 Belzec Author Creator Reder Rudolf 1881 Stanford University Libraries official online search Imprint Krakow Centralna Zydowska Komisja Historyczna 1946 p 1 Retrieved 11 May 2015 Alan Elsner 29 March 2010 A New Nazi War Crimes Trial And This Time It s Personal Internet Archive Archived from the original on 8 May 2015 Retrieved 12 May 2015 Ernst Klee Willi Dressen Volker Riess Schone Zeiten S Fischer Verlag Frankfurt 1988 ISBN 310039304X Bibliography Arad Yitzhak 1999 1987 Belzec Sobibor Treblinka The Operation Reinhard Death Camps Bloomington Indiana University Press ISBN 978 0253342935 Retrieved 10 May 2015 Belzec Fahlbusch Jan H Im Zentrum des Massenmordes Ernst Zierke im Vernichtungslager Belzec in Wojciech Lenarczyk Ed KZ Verbrechen Beitrage zur Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager Metropol Berlin 2007 ISBN 978 3938690505 in German Hilberg Raul The Destruction of the European Jews Yale University Press 2003 revised hardcover edition ISBN 0300095570 Klee Ernst Dressen Willi Riess Volker 1991 The Good Old Days The Holocaust as Seen by its Perpetrators and Bystanders Translated by Deborah Burnstone Konecky Konecky ISBN 978 1568521336 Musial Bogdan 2000 The Origins of Operation Reinhard The Decision Making Process for the Mass Murder of the Jews in the Generalgouvernment in Holocaust From the persecution of the Jews to mass murder By David Cesarani and Sarah Kavanaugh Translated by William Templer Yad Vashem Studies No 28 pp 113 153 ISBN 978 0415275118 Retrieved 9 May 2015 O Neil Robin 2009 Belzec Stepping Stone to Genocide Complete Book and Research by Robin O Neil hosted by JewishGen org OCLC 779194210 Ruckerl Adalbert ed Nationalsozialistische Vernichtungslager im Spiegel deutscher Strafprozesse Belzec Sobibor Treblinka Chelmno 2nd ed dtv Munchen 1978 ISBN 342302904X in German Reder Rudolf Belzec Krakow 1946 Witte Peter and Tyas Stephen 2001 A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of Jews during Einsatz Reinhardt 1942 Holocaust and Genocide Studies Vol 15 No 3 Winter 2001 ISBN 0199225060 Yad Vashem 2015 Resources about Belzec Text maps and photographs at The Holocaust Resource Center website Museum Memorial Site in Belzec official website A Polish Tune 11 minute video that portrays accurately what happened Izhak Weinberg Chris Webb Victor Smart amp Carmelo Lisciotto 2009 The Belzec Death Camp Holocaust Education amp Archive Research Team Internet Archive Retrieved 10 May 2015 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Belzec and Timeline Yad Vashem About the Holocaust Belzec Belzec Sobibor Treblinka Holocaust Denial and Operation ReinhardExternal links Wikimedia Commons has media related to Belzec extermination camp Concentration camps of Nazi Germany on YouTubePortals Germany Poland World War II Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Belzec extermination camp amp oldid 1145079984, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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