See Decision to build the camp. Some assumptions had to be made about the number of persons per each Holocaust train. Diese Seite wurde zuletzt am 19. 1942-06-01 at the beginning of June, deportations of Jews from the Kraków district to Bełżec began. [52] German historians Dieter Pohl and Peter Witte,[53] gave an estimate of 480,000 to 540,000. Treblinka, together with the camps at Bełżec and Sobibor, was one of the Operation Reinhard extermination camps, so called in memory of Reinhard Heydrich. Treblinka, 50.37166666666723.4575Koordinaten: 50° 22′ 18″ N, 23° 27′ 27″ O, Ermordung von Behinderten im deutschen Reichsgebiet (auch Aktion T4), Artikelabschnitt Belzec im Artikel Gaskammer (Massenmord), Artikelabschnitt Aktion Reinhardt im Artikel Lorenz Hackenholt, Liste der Konzentrationslager des Deutschen Reichs, Erhalt und Instandsetzung „Kommandantur Bełżec“, Gedenkstätte Belzec - Aufnahmen vom Oktober 2010, Belzec – eine Gedenkstätte für die Opfer der Shoah. The two camps were connected by a narrow corridor called der Schlauch, or "Tube". Vom Konzentrationslager Esterwegen, über die Verbrechen der sogenannten „Euthanasie“ bis zur „Aktion Reinhard“ in Belzec und Sobibor, wo er maßgeblich für die Umsetzung des Mordprogramms verantwortlich war. [61], 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. In some graves the layer of corpses reached the thickness of ca 2,00m. In the first three months 80,000 people were killed and buried in pits covered with a shallow layer of earth. [22], 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. Bełżec (pronounced [ˈbɛu̯ʐɛt͡s], in German: Belzec), was the first of the World War II Nazi German extermination camps created under Operation Reinhard. [13] Seit November 1942 wurden Leichen massenhaft exhumiert und auf großen Rosten aus Eisenbahnschienen verbrannt. 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. The wooden gas chambers were dismantled. Any Jews kept alive in the camps were dedicated expediting this process. Symbolic "death road" (portion of the memorial in Bełżec). [35][36], The more detailed description of how the gas chambers at Bełżec 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 called Degesch during the Holocaust. Juni 2020 um 14:47 Uhr bearbeitet. 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. Underground passage built in place of former "Sluice" into the gas chambers, evokes the feelings of no escape, Belzec extermination camp memorial. It is not advisable for children under 14 to visit the grounds and buildings of the former camps at Majdanek, in Bełżec and in Sobibór. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – Bełżec and, This page was last edited on 20 December 2020, at 20:31. Zaglada Zydów. [12], Am 11. Die drei Lager wurden in abgelegenen Gebieten errichtet und verfügten über Gleisanschlüsse, so dass eine große Anzahl Menschen ohne größeres Aufsehen dorthin gebracht und getötet werden konnte. [22] 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. In 2001, Lanzmann combined unused interviews with survivor Yehuda Lerner shot during the making of Shoah, along with new … He was in his element, and showing me a large can full of teeth, he said: "See for yourself the weight of that gold! [62] Her mother, Ethel Helfgott, was among the victims in Bełżec. It could "process" the Jews of both regions. They can be heard weeping 'like in the synagogue', says Professor Pfannenstiel,[b] his eyes glued to a window in the wooden door. [9], 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. He formed later the underground group in the camp and was one of the uprising leaders. [26] Removing the bodies from the gas chambers, burying them, sorting and repairing the victims' clothing for shipping was performed by Sonderkommando work-details. Senere blev jøder hentet fra omliggende ghettoer. [34] Józef Marszałek calculated 500,000. Skizzen zur Anordnung der Lageranlagen wurden erst nach dem Krieg von Zeitzeugen angefertigt. Später kamen Baracken für jüdische Häftlinge hinzu, die Kleidung sortierten und in der Wäscherei arbeiteten. [3] The German SS and the administration were housed in two cottages outside the camp. Rubel. November 1941 begann unter der Zentralbauleitung der SS der Bau eines Lagers, das eine fest installierte Gaskammer erhielt. [18] 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. Bełżec : the Nazi camp for Jews in the light of archaeological sources : excavations 1997-1999 by Andrzej Kola ( Book ) The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, Revised and Expanded Edition: Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka by Yitzhak Arad ( ) (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. [63] Anita Ekstein has led many groups of students on educational trips to Poland where she shares her Holocaust story. [a] The people wait inside the gas chambers. [48][49] 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. It was located in the sparsely-populated north east of the Generalgouvernement area, on the Warsaw-Białystock line, close to an existing penal camp founded in 1941. [48] In 1945, the Lublin District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes conducted an investigation into the crimes in Bełżec. The camp had clean sanitary facilities", "Risiera di San Sabba. [3][6] This makes it the third-deadliest extermination camp, exceeded only by Treblinka and Auschwitz. [2] The camp operated from 17 March 1942 to the end of June 1943. Bronnaja Gora | [4] Kurze Zeit später wurden die Sinti von Juden aus Lublin, Radom und Warschau abgelöst. Raul Hilberg gave a figure of 550,000. At the extermination camp—one of the most gruesome sites of the Holocaust —the Nazis killed at least 600,000 Jews. Cemented rails built in place of the original unloading ramp, lead in all directions from which the Jews were brought in. At Katyn, the German-led exhumations by the international Katyn Commission revealed details of the mass murder by examining preserved bodies. [25] To ready themselves for the communal shower, women and children were separated from men. In vain. It was reprinted in 1999 by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum with translation by Margaret M. The Sonderkommando was transported to Sobibor extermination camp around August 1943 and murdered on arrival. Globocnik brought in Obersturmführer Richard Thomalla who was a civil engineer by profession and the camp construction expert in the SS. Roman Robak was one of only two Holocaust survivors of the Bełżec extermination camp who testified about his experience after the war. 1942-06-18 in the Bełżec camp, the Germans built new concrete gas chambers. On March 17, 1942, started mass deportations to the death camp in Bełżec from ghettos in Lublin and Lwow. Located along the Lublin-Lvov railway line, the killing center was only 1,620 feet (less than a half mile) from the Belzec … [12] The Burggraben project was abandoned with the onset of Operation Barbarossa. Arbejdet og senere også drabene blev ledet af 20-30 tyskere, som til dels havde deltaget i Hitlers T4-eutanasiprogram ("T4" var forkortelsen for organisationens adresse, Tiergartenstrasse 4 i Berlin). Bevor die Bauarbeiten begannen, wurden von 1997 an archäologische Untersuchungen durchgeführt, bei denen 33 Massengräber lokalisiert werden konnten.[21]. Stellvertretender Lagerkommandant und Leiter des Vernichtungsbereiches war ab Ende 1941 der SS-Untersturmführer Schwarz. [59] Investigations of grave digging continued through the late 1950s. [11], The Hoefle's numbers were repeated in Korherr Report suggesting their common origin. Dezember 1942 erging ein wochenlanges Verbot von „nicht-militärischen“ Eisenbahntransporten; nach Robert Kuwałek war der Hauptgrund für das Abstoppen der Tötungen jedoch die Überfüllung der Massengräber. 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. Sobibór, along with Bełżec and Treblinka, is one of the three Nazi death camps designed to murder the Jews who arrived there immediately upon arrival, and it is hard to find. The accused were set free except for Oberhauser, who was sentenced to 4½ years of imprisonment, and released after serving half of his sentence. They were built during Operation Reinhard (October 1941 – November 1943), whose goal was to kill all of Poland's Jews. [10], The second phase of extermination began in July 1942, when the new gas chambers were built of brick and mortar on a lightweight foundation,[27] thus enabling the facility to "process" Jews of the two largest agglomerations nearby including the Kraków and the Lwów Ghettos. Bełżec was situated in the Lublin district forty-seven miles north of the major city of Lviv (Lvov, Lwów), conveniently between the large Jewish populations of German-occupied southeast Poland and eastern Galicia. [22], Only seven former members of the SS-Sonderkommando Bełżec were indicted 20 years later in Munich. 1942-08-01 Gottlieb Hering replaces Christian Wirth in Bełżec. [60], Following the collapse of the Communist dictatorship in 1989, the situation began to change. The field of crushed stone serves as grave marker; the entire perimeter contains human ashes mixed with sand. [25] It could handle over 1,000 victims at a time. 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. 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. Wirth kam in der zweiten Dezemberhälfte 1941 vor Ort an und führte im Februar 1942 erste „Probevergasungen“ mit einem selbst erbauten Gaswagen und in einer Gaskammer mit Kohlenstoffmonoxidgas und Motorabgasen durch. [8] The lack of viable witnesses who could testify about the camp's operation is the primary reason why Bełżec is so little-known despite the enormous number of victims. [c] Another 25 minutes elapsed. Even though Zyklon B became broadly available later on, Wirth decided against it. After full zooming use arrows keys to change image and ESC key to close zoom. The original three gas chambers were insufficient for completing the task at hand. They were told that they were being evacuated to Germany instead. 4. [10], Innerhalb der nächsten vier Wochen wurden 75.000 Juden umgebracht, danach die Transporte vorübergehend eingestellt. [64], 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). [5], Between 430,000 and 500,000 Jews are believed to have been murdered by the SS at Bełżec. Zyklon B was produced by a private firm for both Birkenau, and Majdanek nearby, but their infrastructure differed. The mechanics of Sobibor death camp were the subject of interviews filmed on location for the 1985 documentary film Shoah by Claude Lanzmann. [37] In his postwar report written at the Rottweil hotel while in the French custody, Gerstein described his visit to Bełżec on 19 or 18 August 1942. 1942-03-17 mass deportations from the ghettos in Lublin and Lviv to the death camp in Bełżec began. Lorenz Hackenholt(born on June 25, 1914 in Gelsenkirchen, date of death unknown) - German Nazi in the rank of SS-Hauptscharführer. Das Lager Belzec entstand während des Zweiten Weltkrieges neben Sobibór und Treblinka als erstes der drei Vernichtungslager im Rahmen der „Aktion Reinhardt“. (Zum Inhalt und der Intention: Moscovitz, Jahrgang 1969, redet immer wieder davon, dass dieser Film fast zu spät kommt. [8] Israeli historian David Silberklang writes that Belzec "was perhaps the place most representative of the totality and finality of the Nazi plans for Jews". The design was soon imitated by the other two Operation Reinhard extermination camps: Sobibor and Treblinka. [10] The ease of transportation was secured by the railroad junction at nearby Rawa-Ruska and the highway between Lublin-Stadt and Lemberg. Während anfangs maximal 15 Güterwaggons gleichzeitig „abgefertigt“ werden konnten, waren es nach den Erweiterungen der zweiten Phase 40 Güterwaggons. Bełżec fell within the German zone of occupation in accordance with the German-Soviet Pact against Poland. [10][19], 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. [32] 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. He managed to escape in November 1942, and after the war wrote an account of his life in the camp Altogether, 600 000 people were murdered in the Bełżec camp during a period of seven months. The victims were Jews deported from the Lublin Ghetto and its vicinity. Im anderen Lagerkomplex befanden sich mehrere Leichengruben, Unterkünfte für die Juden des Sonderkommandos und die Gaskammern. [1] Das Lager Belzec entstand während des Zweiten Weltkrieges neben Sobibór und Treblinka als erstes der drei Vernichtungslager im Rahmen der „Aktion Reinhardt“. Hitler wanted to kill all of Europe's 11 million Jews. As the number of visitors to Poland interested in Holocaust sites increased, more of them came to Bełżec. See Beginning of the resistance movement in the camp. 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. But it doesn't go. Trains full of people were sent to these camps, and were murdered as soon as they got there. In Bełżec verbrandde men de lichamen noodgedwongen op stapels. Arad’s book is excellent and informative history. The SS completed the work in February 1942 by fitting in the tank engine and the exhaust piping systems for gassing. [16] 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. Bełżec, Sobibor and Treblinka: the Operation Reinhard death camps. Le camp d'extermination de Belzec (Bełżec ; prononcé en polonais : [ˈbɛu̯ʐɛt͡s]) est le premier des trois centres destinés à l'extermination des Juifs d'Europe dans le cadre de l’Aktion Reinhard, avant la mise en service de Sobibor et Treblinka, dont il constitue le prototype.Il est aussi le premier à être doté de chambres à gaz fixes construites à cet effet. Studia i Materialy (Holocaust. Am 1. Portion of the memorial in Bełżec. —Kurt Gerstein, Gerstein Report[44], In the last phase of the camp operations, all prior mass graves were unearthed by a mechanical digger. Treblinka (pronounced [trɛˈblʲinka]) was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. After 2 hours and 49 minutes—the stopwatch recorded it all—the diesel started. [14], The decision to begin work on the first stationary gas chambers in the General Government preceded the actual Wannsee Conference by three months. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. [10] The buried remains often swelled in the heat as a result of putrefaction and the escape of gases. The Reinhard death camps adapted progressively as each new site was built. The first death camps were Treblinka, Bełżec, and Sobibór. [4] The northern boundary of the planned killing centre consisted of an anti-tank trench constructed a year earlier. Das Vernichtungslager Belzec in Bełżec (in der heutigen Woiwodschaft Lublin) war ein deutsches Vernichtungslager, in dem in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus zwischen März 1942 und Dezember 1942 nach Zählung der SS 434.508 Menschen ermordet wurden. Yes, I see it all and I wait. [21], Wirth developed his method on the basis of experience he had gained in the fixed gas chambers of Aktion T4. The National Archives: CAB/66/8/27. 5. [24] The two zones were completely screened from each other and connected only by a narrow corridor called der Schlauch, or "the Tube". Der eine Teil enthielt Verwaltungsgebäude und Baracken zur Entkleidung und Lagerung des Gepäcks. Raul Hilberg gave a figure of 550,000. Belzec | [53] 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). 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. [53] The camp had ceased to operate for mass killings by then. März 1942 der erste Zugtransport mit Juden aus dem Ghetto Lublin in Bełżec ein und brachte wie die nächstfolgenden „arbeitsunfähige“ Menschen, Alte, Frauen und Kinder ins Tötungslager. 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. Unlike Auschwitz, which was a death camp and concentration camp, a vast area the size of lower Manhattan, where slave labor and extermination existed side by side, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka simply to murdered Jews. 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 a free man. [10], 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. Following a decision in 1997 to establish a memorial project in which the entire area of the camp will be the memorial, archaeological research was conducted in order to examine the topography of the former camp, so as to exclude areas with human remains. Bełżec, Sobibor, Treblinka. He was, therefore, an obvious choice to be the first commandant of the first stationary extermination camp of Operation Reinhard in the General Government. [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. They provide the essential knowledge about the functioning of the concentration camp at Majdanek and death camps in Bełżec and Sobibór. Maly Trostinez | Majdanek | You can't imagine what we find every day—dollars, diamonds, gold. "[55], 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. Archive 2. Furious, Captain Wirth lashes the Ukrainian assisting Hackenholt twelve, thirteen times, in the face. Belzec, Polish Bełżec, Nazi German complex of concentration camps and an extermination camp in and near the village of Bełżec along the Lublin-Lviv railway line in the Lublin province of German-occupied Poland. Obóz zagłady w Bełżcu (oficjalnie SS-Sonderkommando Belzec lub Dienststelle Belzec der Waffen SS) – niemiecki nazistowski obóz zagłady funkcjonujący w czasie II wojny światowej, od marca 1942 roku do czerwca 1943 roku, w pobliżu wsi i stacji kolejowej Bełżec.. Obóz został utworzony w ramach akcji „Reinhardt”; prowadzono w nim eksterminację ludności żydowskiej. The clean-up commando of up to 500 prisoners remained in the camp, disinterring the bodies and burning them. English: Bełżec, Lwowska Street - area of the former German-Nazi extermination camp. Zo'n vijfendertighonderd mensen konden nu per dag vergast worden. Sobibór, along with Bełżec and Treblinka, is one of the three Nazi extermination camps designed to murder the Jews who arrived there immediately upon arrival, and … The mass graves at the site were dug up by gravediggers seeking gold and valuables. After 28 minutes, only a few were still alive. The last period of camp's operation continued until June 1943 when the area was ploughed over, and disguised as a farm. [17][18], The "Final Solution" was formulated at Wannsee in late January 1942 by the leading proponents of gassing (who were unaware of Bełżec's existence),[7] including Wilhelm Dolpheid, Ludwig Losacker, Helmut Tanzmann and Governor Otto Wächter. Rudolf Reder a.k.a. 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. Coordinates: .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}50°22′18″N 23°27′27″E / 50.37167°N 23.45750°E / 50.37167; 23.45750, Belzec (English: /ˈbɛl.zɛk/ or /ˈbɛw.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 eradicate Polish Jewry, a key part of the "Final Solution" which entailed the murder of some 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. Bis mindestens 1956 war das Gelände des ehemaligen Vernichtungslagers ohne Umzäunung und unbeaufsichtigt zugänglich. In 2004, Bełżec became a new branch of the Majdanek State Museum. Jüdische Arbeitskommandos wurden zeitweilig in einer Stärke bis zu 500 Personen zur Beseitigung der Leichen und der Verwertung der Kleidung gezwungen; sie wurden später ermordet. You'll see for yourself!" Das Lager bestand aus einer etwa 265 × 275 Meter großen Fläche, die umzäunt und in zwei Bereiche unterteilt war. [5][25] Following Operation Barbarossa, all of them underwent special training at the Trawniki SS camp division before they were posted as "Hiwis" (German letterword for Hilfswilligen, lit. I can see he is afraid because I am present at a disaster. 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),[20] had proven insufficient for the projected number of victims from the Holocaust trains arriving at the new railway approach ramp. [18] Später wurden Motorabgase eingeleitet; die Angaben über die Art des Motors sind widersprüchlich[19] und nicht abschließend zu klären.[20].