Bełżec was the first of the Nazi German extermination camps created for implementing Operation Reinhard during the Holocaust. Operating in 1942, the camp was situated in occupied Poland about half a mile south of the local railroad station Belzec in the Lublin district of the General Government. There are many famous Holocaust survivors who survived the Nazi genocides in Europe and went on to achievements of great fame and notability. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... This is a list of people who helped Jewish people and others to escape from the Nazi Holocaust during World War II, often called rescuers. The list is not exhaustive, concentrating on famous cases, or people who saved the lives of many potential victims. ... Holocaust resources for main article The Holocaust. ... Book cover The Destruction of the European Jews is a three-volume work published in 1961 by historian Raul Hilberg. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Functionalism versus intentionalism is a historiographical debate about the origins of the Holocaust as well as most aspects of the Third Reich, such as foreign policy. ... Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... Extermination camps were the facilities constructed by Nazi Germany in World War II where the Nazis systematically killed millions of people as part of what was later deemed The Holocaust. ... Operation Reinhard (Aktion Reinhard, Einsatz Reinhard, Aktion Reinhardt or Einsatz Reinhardt in German) was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the former General Government and rob their possessions. ... This article is becoming very long. ... For other uses, see Lublin (disambiguation). ... The General Government (in full General government for the occupied Polish areas, in German Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete) was the name given by Germany to the governing authority in Poland after its occupation by the Wehrmacht in September and October 1939. ...

At least 434,508 Jews were killed at Belzec, and only two Jews are known to have survived Belzec: Rudolf Reder and Chaim Herszman. The lack of survivors may be the reason why this camp is so little known despite its number of victims.

Operation of the camp

On 13 October 1941, Heinrich Himmler gave SS and Police Leader Lublin, SS Brigadefuehrer Odilo Globocnik, two orders in a conference, which were closely connected with each other: to start Germanizing the area around Zamosc and to start work on the first extermination camp in the General Government near Belzec. The site was chosen for three reasons: it was situated at the border between the districts Lublin and Galicia, thus indicating its purpose to serve as a killing site for the Jews of both districts; for reasons of transport it lay next to the railroad and the main road between Lublin and Lvov; the northern boundary of the planned death camp was the anti-tank ditch dug a year before by Jewish slave workers of the former forced labor camp. The ditch was originally excavated for of military reasons, now it was likely to serve as the first huge mass grave. Globocnik's construction expert SS Obersturmfuehrer Richard Thomalla commenced work in early November 1941, using Polish villagers, Globocnik's Trawniki men and, later, Jewish slave workers. The installation was finished by early March 1942. October 13 is the 286th day of the year (287th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For the movie, see 1941 (film). ...   (October 7, 1900 – May 23, 1945) was the commander of the German Schutzstaffel (SS) and one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany. ... Odilo Globocnik Odilo Globocnik (April 21, 1904 - May 31, 1945) was a prominent Austrian Nazi and later an SS leader. ... The General Government (in full General government for the occupied Polish areas, in German Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete) was the name given by Germany to the governing authority in Poland after its occupation by the Wehrmacht in September and October 1939. ... Trawniki was a Nazi labour camp in occupied Poland during the Second World War, under the command of HauptsturmfÇ–hrer Theodor von Eupen. ...

The two commanders of the camp, Criminal Police officers Christian Wirth and Gottlieb Hering, had — in common with almost all of their staff — been involved in the Nazi euthanasia program since 1940. Wirth had the leading position as a supervisor of all six euthanasia institutions in the Reich; Hering as the non-medical chief of Sonnenstein (Pirna, Saxony) and Hadamar. As a participant of the first T-4 test gassing of handicapped people at Brandenburg, Wirth had been a killing expert from the beginning. He was, therefore, an obvious choice to be the first commandant of the first extermination camp in the General Government. It might have been his proposal to transfer the T-4 technology of killing by carbon monoxide gas in stationary gas chambers to Belzec, because the comparable technology of mobile gas vans used before since December 1941 in the extermination camp Chelmno (Kulmhof) had proven insufficient as to the planned number of victims. For economic and transport reasons, Wirth did not make use here of industrial bottled carbon monoxide as in T-4, but had the same gas supplied a big engine (although witnesses differ as to its type, most probably it was a petrol engine), whose exhaust fumes, poisonous in an enclosed space, were led by a system of pipes into the gas chambers. For very small transports of Jews and Gypsies over a short distance, a minimized version of the gas van technology was used in Belzec: T-4 man and first operator of the gas chambers, Lorenz Hackenholt, rebuilt an Opel-Blitz post office vehicle with the help of a local craftsman into a small gas van. A member of the staff testified that the Jewish office girls were murdered in this car on the very last day of Belzec. Christian Wirth, better known by the pseudonym RaD Man, is a computer artist and historian. ... Euthanasia (from Greek: ευθανασία -ευ, eu, good, θάνατος, thanatos, death) is the practice of terminating the life of a person or animal in a painless or minimally painful way in order to stop suffering or other undesired conditions in life. ... This poster reads: 60,000 Reichsmark is what this person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community during his lifetime. ... Schloss Sonnenstein, also know as Sonnenstein der Pirna, is a mountain with a former fortress located near Pirna, Saxony, Germany. ... It may have been generated by a computer or by a translator with limited proficiency in English or the original language. ... The Free State of Saxony (German: Freistaat Sachsen; Sorbian: Swobodny Stat Sakska) is the easternmost federal state of Germany. ... Hadamar the site of a former insane asylum used by the Nazis as the site of their T-4 Euthanasia Program, which performed mass sterilizations and mass murder of undesirable members of Nazi society, specifically the physically and mentally handicapped. ...   (Lower Sorbian: Bramborska; Upper Sorbian: Braniborska) is one of Germanys sixteen Bundesländer (federal states). ... The General Government (in full General government for the occupied Polish areas, in German Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete) was the name given by Germany to the governing authority in Poland after its occupation by the Wehrmacht in September and October 1939. ... Carbon monoxide, with the chemical formula CO, is a colourless, odourless, and tasteless gas. ... The gas van was an extermination method devised by Nazi Germany to kill their victims during World War II. It was a vehicle with an air-tight compartment for victims into which exhaust fumes were transmitted while the engine was running. ... Extermination camps were the facilities constructed by Nazi Germany in World War II where the Nazis systematically killed millions of people as part of what was later deemed The Holocaust. ... The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. ... The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. ...

The wooden gas chambers were disguised as the barracks and showers of a labor camp, so that the victims would not realize the true purpose of the site, and the process was conducted as quickly as possible: people were forced to run from the trains to the gas chambers, leaving them no time to absorb where they were or to plan a revolt. Finally, a handful of Jews were selected to perform all the manual work involved with extermination (removing the bodies from the gas chambers, burying them, sorting and repairing the victims' clothing, etc.). The extermination process itself was conducted by Hackenholt, Ukrainian guards, and a Jewish aide. The Jewish Sonderkommandos were killed periodically and replaced by new arrivals, so that they would not organize in a revolt either. Sonderkommandos were groups of Nazi death camp prisoners forced to aid the killing process. ...

Eventually, the extermination camp consisted of two subcamps: Camp I, which included the barracks of the Ukrainians, the workshops and barracks of the Jews, the reception area with two undressing barracks, and Camp II, which contained the gas chambers and the mass graves. The two camps were connected by a narrow corridor called the Schlauch, or "Tube". The German guards and the administration were housed in two cottages outside the camp across the road.

Belzec's three gas chambers began operating officially on March 17, 1942, the date given for the start of Operation Reinhard. Its first victims were Jews deported from Lublin and Lvov. March 17 is the 76th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (77th in leap years). ... Year 1942 (MCMXLII) was a common year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1942 calendar). ... Operation Reinhard (Aktion Reinhard, Einsatz Reinhard, Aktion Reinhardt or Einsatz Reinhardt in German) was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the former General Government and rob their possessions. ...

There were many technical difficulties in this first attempt at mass extermination. The gas chamber mechanisms were problematic, and usually only one or two were working at any given time, causing a backlog. Furthermore, the corpses were buried in pits covered with only a narrow layer of earth. The bodies often swelled in the heat as a result of putrefaction and the escape of gases, and the covering of earth split. This latter problem was corrected in other death camps with the introduction of crematoria. Putrefaction is the decomposition of proteins, especially by anaerobic microorganisms. ... Cremation is the practice of disposing of a corpse by burning. ...

It was soon realized that the original three gas chambers were insufficient for completing the task at hand, especially with the growing number of arrivals from Kraków and Lvov. A new complex with six gas chambers made of concrete, each 4 × 4 or 5 meters, was erected, and the wooden gas chambers were dismantled. The new facility, which could handle over 1,000 victims at a time, was imitated by the other two Operation Reinhard extermination camps: Sobibór and Treblinka. In December 1942, the last shipment of Jews arrived in Belzec. By that time, the Jews in the area served by Belzec had been almost entirely exterminated, and it was felt that the new facilities under construction at Auschwitz-Birkenau could handle the rest. Wawel Hill. ... Sobibór was a Nazi extermination camp that was part of Operation Reinhard. ... Treblinka was a Nazi extermination camp in German-occupied Poland during World War II. Extermination camps like the one at Treblinka were used in the Holocaust for the systematic genocide of sub-humans by the Nazis. ... The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. ...

The camp's first commander, Christian Wirth, was killed in Italy by partisans near Trieste in the end of May, 1944. His successor Gottlieb Hering served after the war for a short time as the chief of Criminal Police of Heilbronn and died in Fall 1945 in a hospital. Lorenz Hackenholt survived the war, but has never been found again. Seven former members of the SS-Sonderkommando Belzec were indicted in Munich (Germany), but only one, Josef Oberhauser, was brought to trial in 1965 and sentenced to four and a half years in prison. Trieste (Italian: Trieste; Slovenian and Croatian: Trst; German: Triest; Hungarian: Trieszt; Latin: Tergeste; Serbian: Трст or Trst) is a city and port in northeastern Italy right on the border with Slovenia. ... View of the Heilbronn centre of town toward the Wartberg. ... Munich (German: , pronounced  ) is the capital of the German Federal State of Bavaria (German: ). Munich is Germanys third largest city and one of Europes most prosperous and expensive. ... 20/09/1915 - 22/11/1979 BACKGROUND: Born in Munich. ...

Kurt Gerstein's testimony

SS Lt. Kurt Gerstein, who worked in the SS medical service, was ordered to deliver a shipment of Zyklon B to Belzec. He was so shocked by what he saw that he immediately buried the canisters of poison gas, and confessed his experiences to a Swedish diplomat. He describes how he arrived at Belzec on August 19 where he witnessed the unloading of 45 train cars stuffed with 6,700 Jews, many of whom were already dead, but the rest were marched naked to the gas chambers, where: Kurt Gerstein (August 11, 1905 in Münster, Westfalia - July 25, 1945, Paris), was a member of the Institute for Hygiene of the Waffen-SS and aided in mass murders in the Nazi extermination camps Belzec and Treblinka. ... Zyklon B label — Note that “Gift” translates as “poison” Zyklon B was the tradename of a pesticide ultimately used by Nazi Germany in some Holocaust gas chambers. ... August 19 is the 231st day of the year (232nd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ...

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. The people wait inside the gas chambers. In vain. They can be heard weeping, "like in the synagogue," says Professor Pfannenstiel, 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 shut up in those four crowded chambers were still alive, four times 750 persons in four times 45 cubic meters. 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!" Christian Wirth, better known by the pseudonym RaD Man, is a computer artist and historian. ...

Death toll

After the war, Eugeniusz Strojt in an article in the Bulletin of the Main Commission for Investigation of the German Crimes in Poland, estimated the people murdered in Belzec as 600,000^{[citation needed]}. This number became widely accepted in literature. Raul Hilberg gave a figure of 550,000^[1]. Y. Arad accepted 600,000^[2] as minimum, and the sum in his table of Belzec deportations exceeded 500,000^[2]. J. Marszalek calculated 500,000^{[citation needed]}. British historian Robin O'Neil once gave an estimate of about 800,000^{[citation needed]} (based on his investigations at the site). Dieter Pohl and Peter Witte^[3] gave estimate of 480,000 to 540,000. Michael Tregenza wrote of possible 1,000,000 victims^{[citation needed]}. Dr. Raul Hilberg Raul Hilberg (born June 2, 1926) is one of the best-known and most distinguished of the Holocaust historians. ... Robin ONeil is a noted British researcher into the Holocaust (or Shoah), the destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis during the 1930s and early 1940s. ...

The crucial piece of evidence in the debate was published in 2001 by Stephen Tyas and Peter Witte.^[3] It was a telegram sent by Hermann Hoefle, Operation Reinhard's Chief of Staff, which indicates that 434,508 Jews were killed in Belzec through December 31, 1942. The Hofle Telegram. ... December 31 is the 365th day of the year (366th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Year 1942 (MCMXLII) was a common year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1942 calendar). ...

The difference between this "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, which were not guaranteed to give the exact estimates of the numbers of deportees. He also had to rely on partial German railway documentation, from the numbers of trains could be gleaned. But here also assumptions had to be made about the number of persons per train.^[2] Considering the vagueness of primary sources, many old scholarly estimates are not far off the mark.^{[citation needed]} The Yizkor prayers are recited by those that have lost either one or both of their parents. ...

It should also be noted that it is not completely clear whether the Jews who died in transit are included in the final sum.^{[citation needed]} Considering the aim of compiling such a statistic (which was to know the overall number of the victims of the "Final Solution"—Hoefle's numbers were used in Korherr Report) they probably were included.^{[citation needed]} Also, the sources like Westermann's report^[4] contain the exact data about the number of deported persons, but only estimates of the numbers of those who died in transit, the fact which also hints that they were included in the final sum, because it would be hard for the authorities in Belzec to learn the exact number of those murdered, excluding the dead in transport. Nevertheless, there is no final clarity in this question. The Korherr Report, is a document on the progress of the Holocaust written by the chief inspector of the statistical bureau of the SS, Dr Richard Korherr, on instructions from Heinrich Himmler on January 18, 1943. ...

Remains of the camp

As was the case in all of the extermination camps, the Nazis tried to hide or destroy evidence at the end of the war. Bodies were dug up and then crushed and cremated, and the camp was systematically dismantled. From late 1997 until early 1998, a thorough archaeological survey of the site was conducted as there was no memorial yet at the site. The survey was headed by Andrzej Kola, director of the Underwater Archaeological Department at the University of Torun, and Mieczyslaw Gora, senior curator of the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Lodz. The team identified the railway sidings and remains of a number of buildings. They also found 33 mass graves, the largest of which were 210 by 60 feet. The team estimated that they had found 15,000 unburned bodies, and "The largest mass graves ... contained unburned human remains (parts and pieces of skulls with hair and skin attached). The bottom layer of the graves consisted of several inches thick of black human fat. One grave contained uncrushed human bones so closely packed that the drill could not penetrate." ^[5]

Postwar commemoration

Scrawled with a Pencil in the Sealed Cattle Car, a poem by Dan Pagis, forms part of the modern memorial.

Due to Nazi efforts to erase evidence of the camp's existence near the war's end, almost all traces of the camp disappeared from the surface of the site. The mass graves of the camp's victims remained, however, and in the postwar years some of the local inhabitants disturbed them to look for any valuables buried with the victims. These desecrations became relatively well known all over Poland and were widely condemned in the Polish press of the time. Nevertheless, the practice continued for a number of years, and the Polish authorities were unable to put an effective stop to it. Pursuit of the perpetrators continued into the second half of the 1950s. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1280x960, 245 KB) autor: Yarek shalom 08:11, 25 October 2006 (UTC)yarek shalom File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Belzec extermination camp Metadata This file contains... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1280x960, 245 KB) autor: Yarek shalom 08:11, 25 October 2006 (UTC)yarek shalom File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Belzec extermination camp Metadata This file contains... Dan Pagis, Israeli poet, was born in Bukovina in Eastern Europe in 1930. ...

In the 1960s the area of the former camp was fenced off, and a few small monuments were placed on the site. The fenced area did not correspond to the actual area of the camp during its operation, and so some commercial development took place on areas formerly belonging to it. Due to the isolated location on Poland's eastern border, only a very small number of people visited the former camp before 1989. The site was largerly forgotten and poorly maintained.

Following the collapse of communism in 1989, the situation slowly changed. As the number of visitors to Poland interested in Holocaust sites increased, more of them came to Belzec. Many reacted negatively to the unkempt state of the grounds. 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, a large new monument commemorating the camp's victims was unveiled. 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Notes

1. ^ Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, Yale University Press, 2003, revised hardcover edition, ISBN 0-300-09557-0
2. ^ ^{a b c} Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1987, NCR 0-253-34293-7
3. ^ ^{a b} Peter Witte and Stephen Tyas, 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 0-19-922506-0
4. ^ The Westermann Report http://www.deathcamps.org/occupation/westermann.htm
5. ^ "Archeologists reveal new secrets of Holocaust", Reuters News, 21 July 1998

July 21 is the 202nd day (203rd in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 163 days remaining. ... 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean [1]. // Coated in ice, power and telephone lines sag and often break, resulting in power outages. ...

Bibliography

• Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1987, NCR 0-253-34293-7
• Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, Yale University Press, 2003, revised hardcover edition, ISBN 0-300-09557-0
• Peter Witte and Stephen Tyas, 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 0-19-922506-0
• Adalbert Rückerl (Ed.): Nationalsozialistische-Vernichtungslager im Spiegel deutscher Strafprozesse. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno, dtv dokumente, München 1977, ISBN 978-3423029049
• Rudolf Reder, Belzec, Kraków, 1946

Coordinates: 50°22′18″N, 23°27′27″E Map of Earth showing lines of latitude (horizontally) and longitude (vertically), Eckert VI projection; large version (pdf, 1. ...