Belzec


 * Belzec**


 * Belzec was the first killing center made by Adolf Hitler. Over tens of thousands of Jews and Gypsies were killed in Belzec.[|gas chambers]**

Jessica Roarabaugh

 * Extermination camps were established for mass murderings.
 * The frist extermination camp was Belzec.
 * Belzec was a slave labor camp originally in 1940.
 * It was established as a extermiantion camp in March 1942.
 * About 600,000 Jews and Gypsies were killed there.
 * This extermination camp was known as a Aktion Reinhard Camp.
 * The only two know people who survived from Belzec were Rudolf Reder and Chaim Herszman.
 * Sonderkommandos were people that were chosen to do the manual work of the killing process.
 * Originally the camp had only 3 gas chambers disguised as barracks and showers of a labor camp.
 * The 3 gas chambers were insufficent and needed to be replaced.
 * 6 new concrete, 4 x 5 meter, chambers were put in place of the 3 old wooden ones.
 * The new chambers were able to hold at least 1,000 people at a time.
 * These new more efficent chambers were imiated by the chambers of Sobibor and Treblinka.
 * When the Jews arrived at Belzec by train, the men were separted fromt the women and children,then they were force to __**run**__ through the "Tube" and then into different parts of the camp where they were undressed and sorted out into the different gas chambers.
 * This whole process was done as quickly as possible so that none of the Jews could figure out their fate fast enough to start a revolt or run away.
 * By the end of the war two out of every three Jews in Europe had been killed.
 * Sonderkommandos that were there at the end of the war were kept until the camp was destroyed.
 * At the end of the war the Nazis tried to cover everything up and act like nothing happened.
 * Bodies were dug up out of the mass graves, than crushed and/or cremated.
 * The whole camp had to be systemically dismantled.
 * The sonderkommandos that were still there were shot in Belzec or deproted to the Sobibor killing center to be gassed.
 * After that, the ground was poughed over by the Germans.
 * A manor house was built for a former auxiliary police guard.
 * Trees and crops were planted and the camp was now a farm.
 * The Nazis tried to make it look as though Belzec was never even there.

=A group of Gypsies waiting just before they were supposed to go into a gas chamber.=

=Jews being loaded on a train headed for their way to Belzec.=

[|Here is where you will find a lot of important] [|information on][| the extermination camp Belzec.]

By: Josh B.//**
 * //__Belzec Extermination Camp__


 * The first transport of jews reached Belzec on May 29,1940.
 * Was the first of the Nazi German Camps created
 * 11 Thousand atended the camp and thousands die of starvation, overwork, execution, or brutal living conditions.
 * First victims were killed in cells filled with diesel fumes.
 * Then they move to Zyklon-B
 * 600,000 people died at Belzec including 2,000 non-jews
 * Only 2 people were known to survive (Rudolf Reder and Chaim Herszman)
 * Handicapped people were the first people to test out the T-4 test gasing
 * The wooden chambers were diguised as the barraks and showers of the camp
 * The Nazis tried to hide bodies but they were dug up and cremated
 * They also found remains of the building and 33 mass graves
 * In the mass graves they found 15,000 unburned bodies

Roll call at the camp

Belzec Extermination Camp By: Josh H. > SS Guards patroling Belzec
 * Belzec was established on Nov. 1st 1941
 * Was a hard labor camp then within 2 yrs. it became a extermination camp
 * Belzec divided into 2 camps into 3 parts: Administration Section, Barracks and storage for goods and extermination
 * Started killing March 17th 1942 and Dec. 1942
 * 3 [|gas chambers] later 6 gas chambers
 * 30 min. killing process
 * Used Zyklon B
 * Killing center screened off from eachother
 * "The Tube" was a narrow path that connected the killing centers
 * Belzec was small and surrounded by watch towers
 * Men, women, children forced to undress and then went to the gas chambers which were disguised as showers
 * 2 phrases of operations
 * Located in SE Poland
 * Bodies were crushed when died
 * Nazi covered up Belzec as a Farm



Belzec By:Kira G

THE CAMP:
 * Belzec was divided into three parts: administration section, barracks and storage for plundered goods, and extermination.
 * They had double boarded sides on the walls.
 * Inside the walls of [|this barracks] there were double sided walls of boards and a vacant space full of sand.
 * Women had their hair shaved off.
 * The building was set up to kill up to 1,200 Jews at one time.
 * During the early months of 1943, the corpses of the murdered Jews were disinterred and burned in open air pits.
 * The camp was then closed.
 * A narrow path called "the tube" connected the two sections of the killing center.
 * Rail tracks ran from the gas chambers to the burial pits.
 * Fine boughs woven into the barb-wire fence and trees planted around the perimeter served as camouflage to prevent curious outsiders from seeing operations inside the camp.
 * The gassing operations at the Belzec began in mid-march 1942.
 * Trains of 40 to 60 freight cars, with 80 to100 people crowded into each car, arrived at Belzec railway station.

PEOPLE THERE:
 * Commanders of the camps: Christian Wirth and Gottlieb Hering.

Christian Wirth:

WHAT HAPPENED:
 * He was a senior SS officer during the program to exterminate the Jewish people to occupy Poland, during the second World War.
 * Wirth was the chief of the [|Criminal Police] in [|Stuttgart] befroe being transferred to the head T-4 program.
 * In one case, a suspect who was known to be responsible for a crime but who would not confess was left alone for a time with Wirth. Not only did get a full confession to this crime, he also obtained confessions to six others.
 * In August 1941, he was transferred out of T-4 and in September 1941 was sent to [|Chelmno] to start gassing [|Jews] and [|Gypsies] there.
 * During the construction of Sobibor, the second Aktion Reinhard death camp, Wirth visited the incomplete site, and conducted an experimental gassing of twenty-five Jewish slave-labourers.
 * He liked to carry a whip, and he used it on both Jewish victims and guards.
 * Wirth took a direct role in reorganizing it when the first commandant, Dr. [|Irmfried Eberl], was replaced by Franz Stangl.
 * After Aktion Reinhard (in which 1.4 million Jews and thousands of Gypsies were murdered) was terminated, Wirth was sent to [|Trieste] in Italy with other former Aktion Reinhard staff to kill partisans in the area.
 * Wirth was killed by Slovenian partisans in [|Trieste] and [|Fiume] in May 1944.


 * 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.
 * A member of the staff testified that the Jewish office girls were murdered in this car on the very last day of Belzec.
 * 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].

KURT GERSTEIN'S TESTIMONY


 * Gerstein was born in [|Münster] in [|Westphalia].
 * He completed his first degree, in [|Engineering], in 1931.
 * While studying he was, like all male members of the Gerstein family, a member of the [|Corps Teutonia Marburg].
 * In 1933 he became a mining inspector for the [|Nazi government] and joined the [|Nazi Party].
 * A semi-fictional movie about his emotional search for Christian values and ultimate decision to betray the SS by attempting to expose the Holocaust through informing the Catholic Church, //[|Amen]//, was released in 2002, starring [|Ulrich Tukur] as Kurt Gerstein and directed by [|Costa-Gavras].

http://www.gerstein.dk/ - The story of Kurt Gerstein

REMAINS OF THE CAMP:


 * There are still signs of at least one of the camp sites, but they are not in use for anything.
 * Sometimes people that are just learning about the Holocaust, go there to see it, but there are gates up so that people cannot get in.
 * These sites are in Poland, where they were obviously used.