View source for Belzec extermination camp

{{Short description|Nazi extermination camp in Poland (1942–1943)}}
{{Redirect|Belzec|the nearby village|Bełżec (village)}}
{{pp-extended|small=yes}}
{{Use British English|date=July 2023}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2020}}
{{Infobox concentration camp
| name         = Belzec
| type         = [[Extermination camp|Nazi extermination camp]]
| image        = File:Lubelszczyna marzec 1942 Żydzi w drodze do obozu zagłady w Bełżcu.jpg
| image size   =
| caption      = Jews from [[Lublin District]] during deportation to Belzec
[[File:WW2-Holocaust-Poland.PNG|222px|center]]
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
| other names  =
| known for    = Annihilation of Europe's Jews in [[the Holocaust]]
| location     = Near [[Bełżec, Lublin Voivodeship|Bełżec]], [[General Government]] (German-occupied Poland)
| coordinates  = {{Coord|50|22|18|N|23|27|27|E|region:PL-06_type:landmark|display=title,inline}}
| built by     = {{plain list|
* [[Richard Thomalla]] (layout)
* [[Lorenz Hackenholt]] (gas chambers)
}}
| operated by = [[SS-Totenkopfverbände]]
| commandant  = {{plain list|
* [[Christian Wirth]] (Dec. 1941 – Aug. 1942)
* [[Gottlieb Hering]] (Aug. 1942 – June 1943)
}}
| construction    = 1 November 1941 – March 1942
| in operation    = 17 March 1942 – end of June 1943
| gas chambers    = 3 (later 6){{sfn|Arad|1999|p=73}}
| prisoner type   = Polish, German, Czech, Ukrainian and Austrian Jews
| inmates         =
| killed          = 434,508–600,000
| notable inmates = [[Rudolf Reder]]
| notable books   =
| website         =
}}

'''Belzec''' (English: {{IPAc-en|'|b|ɛ|l|.|z|ɛ|k|}} or {{IPAc-en|'|b|ɛ|l|.|ʒ|ɛ|t|s|}}, Polish: {{IPA|pl|ˈbɛu̯ʐɛt͡s|}}; {{IPA|de|ˈbɛlzɛts|lang}}) was a Nazi German [[extermination camp]] in [[Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)|occupied Poland]]. It was built by the [[SS]] for the purpose of implementing the secretive [[Operation Reinhard]], the plan to murder all [[History of Jews in Poland|Polish Jews]], a major part of the "[[Final Solution]]", the overall Nazi effort to complete the genocide of all European Jews. Before Germany's defeat put an end to this project more than six million Jews had been murdered in [[the Holocaust]].<ref name="YV">{{cite web |url=http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%205724.pdf |title=Aktion Reinhard |author=Yad Vashem |publisher=Shoah Resource Center |access-date=1 July 2013}}</ref> The camp operated from {{Dts|1942|March|17|format=dmy}} to the end of {{Dts|1943|June}}.<ref name="ushmm-belzec">{{cite web|url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005191 |author=The Holocaust Encyclopedia |title=Belzec |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |format=Internet Archive |access-date=10 May 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120107184303/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005191 |archive-date=7 January 2012 }}</ref> It was situated about {{convert|500|m|ft|abbr=on}} south of the local railroad station of [[Bełżec, Lublin Voivodeship|Bełżec]], in the new [[Lublin District]] of the [[General Government]] territory of [[Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)|German-occupied Poland]].<ref name="MMPwB-Reinhardt">{{citation |url=http://www.belzec.org.pl/ |title=Decyzja o podjęciu akcji 'Reinhardt' |publisher=Muzeum-Miejsce Pamięci w Bełżcu, Oddział Państwowego Muzeum na Majdanku |author=MMPwB |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090820090521/http://www.belzec.org.pl/ |archive-date=20 August 2009 }}</ref> The burning of exhumed corpses on five [[pyre|open-air grids]] and bone crushing continued until March 1943.<ref name="arc-belzec">{{cite web |author=ARC |title=Belzec Camp History |publisher=Aktion Reinhard |url=http://www.deathcamps.org/belzec/belzec.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051225034440/http://www.deathcamps.org/belzec/belzec.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=25 December 2005 |date=26 August 2006 |access-date=27 April 2015}}</ref>

Between 430,000 and 500,000 Jews are believed to have been murdered by the SS at Bełżec.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/><ref name="chgs.umn.edu">{{cite web |url=http://www.chgs.umn.edu/museum/memorials/belzec/ |title=Belzec Death Camp Memorial, Poland |publisher=Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies : University of Minnesota |access-date=10 May 2015}}</ref> It was the third-deadliest extermination camp, exceeded only by [[Treblinka extermination camp|Treblinka]] and [[Auschwitz]].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Snyder|first=Timothy|url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2009/07/16/holocaust-the-ignored-reality/|title=Holocaust: The Ignored Reality|journal=The New York Review|date=16 July 2009|access-date=8 April 2022}}</ref> Only seven Jews performing slave labour with the camp's ''[[Sonderkommando]]'' survived World War&nbsp;II.<ref name="arc-belzec"/> Only [[Rudolf Reder]]'s experience there became known,<ref name=Bergen178>{{cite book |last=Bergen |first=Doris |year=2009 |title=War & Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=INbnwj_AQVIC&pg=PA185 |edition=2nd |series=Critical Issues in World and International History |location=Plymouth, UK |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield Publishers |page=185 |isbn=9780742557161}}</ref> thanks to his official postwar testimony.<ref name=RememberMe/>
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.<ref name=RememberMe>{{cite web |url=http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/belzec/belzecrememberme.html |title=Belzec Death Camp: Remember Me |work=Alphabetical Listing |year=2007 |publisher=Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team |access-date=27 April 2015}}</ref> Israeli historian [[David Silberklang]] writes that Belzec "was perhaps the place most representative of the totality and finality of the Nazi plans for Jews".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Silberklang |first1=David |title=Gates of Tears: The Holocaust in the Lublin District |date=2013 |publisher=Yad Vashem  |isbn=978-9653084643|title-link=Gates of Tears |page=16}}</ref>

==Background==
In the [[Second Polish Republic]], the village of Bełżec was situated between the two major cities in the [[Kresy|southeastern part of the country]] including [[Lublin]] {{convert|47|mi|order=flip}} northwest of Bełżec, and [[Lwów Voivodeship|Lwów]] to the southeast ({{langx|de|link=no|Lemberg}}, now [[Lviv]], Ukraine) with the largest Jewish populations in the region. Bełżec fell within the [[German occupation of Poland|German zone of occupation]] in accordance with the [[German-Soviet Pact]] against Poland. Originally, [[Forced labour under German rule during World War II|Jewish forced labour]] was brought into the area in April 1940 for the construction of [[Nisko Plan#Burggraben project|military defence facilities]] of the German strategic plan codenamed [[Operation Otto]] against the Soviet advance beyond [[German-Soviet Frontier Treaty|their common frontier]] following the [[Soviet invasion of Poland|Soviet invasion of 1939]].<ref name="M/MPwB">{{citation |title=Historia Niemieckiego Obozu Zagłady w Bełżcu [History of the Belzec extermination camp] |publisher=National Bełżec Museum & Monument of Martyrology [Muzeum – Miejsce Pamięci w Bełżcu] |url=http://www.belzec.eu/articles.php?acid=77 |language=pl |access-date=14 March 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151029003413/http://www.belzec.eu/articles.php?acid=77 |archive-date=29 October 2015 }}</ref>

[[File:Deportacja Żydów z Zamościa do obozu zagłady w Bełżcu.jpg|thumb|Deportation of Jews to Bełżec from [[Zamość]], April 1942]]

In the territory of the so-called [[Lublin Reservation|Nisko "reservation"]], the city of Lublin became the hub of the early Nazi transfer of about 95,000 German, Austrian, and Polish Jews expelled from the West and the General Government area.<ref name="Encyclopedia">{{cite book |author=Robert Rozett |author2=Shmuel Spector |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J5EuAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA47 |title=Encyclopedia of the Holocaust |publisher=Routledge |page=47 |isbn=978-1135969509 |year=2013}}</ref> The prisoners were put to work by the ''[[Schutzstaffel]]'' (SS) in the construction of anti-tank ditches (''Burggraben'') along the [[Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact|transitory Nazi-Soviet border]].<ref name=Schwindt52>{{cite book |first=Barbara |last=Schwindt |title=Das Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslager Majdanek: Funktionswandel im Kontext der "Endlösung" |publisher=Königshausen & Neumann |year=2005 |page=52 |isbn=978-3826031236}}</ref> The ''Burggraben'' project was abandoned with the onset of [[Operation Barbarossa]].<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/><ref name="Browning-1995">{{cite book |author-link=Christopher R. Browning |first=Christopher R. |last=Browning |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=L1O2ZvS29DYC&pg=PA6 |title=The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1995 |isbn=0521558786}}</ref> On 13 October 1941, [[Heinrich Himmler]] gave the [[SS]]-and-Police Leader of Lublin, ''SS [[Brigadeführer]]'' [[Odilo Globočnik]] an order to start [[Germanization|Germanizing]] the area around [[Zamość]],<ref name="M/MPwB"/> which entailed the removal of Jews from the areas of future settlement.{{sfn|Musiał|2000|pp=192–194}}

===Camp construction===
{{main|The Holocaust in Poland}}
The decision to begin work on the first stationary [[Gas chamber#Germany|gas chambers]] in the [[General Government]] preceded the actual [[Wannsee Conference]] by three months.<ref name="M/MPwB"/> The first steps were taken between mid-September and mid-October 1941,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Browning |first=Christopher R. |year=1994|title=The Nazi Decision to Commit Mass Murder: Three Interpretations: The Euphoria of Victory and the Final Solution: Summer-Fall 1941|journal=German Studies Review |volume=17 |issue=3 |pages=477 |doi=10.2307/1431894 |issn=0149-7952 |jstor=1431894}}</ref> and the construction began around 1 November.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=je27CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA74 |title=The Extermination of the European Jews|last=Gerlach|first=Christian|date= 2016|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0521880787 |page=74 |language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref name="M/MPwB"/> The ease of transportation was secured by the railroad junction at nearby [[Rava-Ruska|Rawa-Ruska]] and the highway between Lublin-Stadt and Lemberg.<ref name="MMPwB-Reinhardt"/> 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 men|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.<ref name="JVL">{{cite web | url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/reinhard.html | title=The "Final Solution": Operation Reinhard – The Camps of Belzec, Sobibor & Treblinka - The Construction of the Belzec Extermination Camp | publisher=Jewish Virtual Library | year=2015 | orig-year=1984 | access-date=25 April 2015 | translator-last=McVay | translator-first=Kenneth }}</ref><ref name="ARC-Reinhard"/>

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),<ref name=Bergen178/> including Wilhelm Dolpheid, Ludwig Losacker, Helmut Tanzmann and Governor [[Otto Wächter]].<ref name="ARC-Reinhard"/> Dolpheid negotiated with the ''SS-Oberführer'' [[Viktor Brack]] in Berlin for the use of the [[Aktion T4]] personnel in the process.<ref name="ARC-Reinhard">{{cite web |url=http://www.deathcamps.org/reinhard/finalsolution.html |title=Aktion Reinhard and the Emergence of 'The Final Solution' |publisher=Deathcamps.org |year=2014 |access-date=4 March 2014}}</ref> 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).<ref name="M/MPwB"/><ref name="annefrank.dk">{{cite web |url=http://www.annefrank.dk/kurtgerstein/report.htm |title=The Gerstein Report (''Der Gerstein-Bericht im NS-Archiv'') |publisher=Annefrank.dk |date=26 May 1945 |access-date=4 March 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140203235034/http://www.annefrank.dk/kurtgerstein/report.htm |archive-date=3 February 2014 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

===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 [[Aktion T4|forced euthanasia program]] since 1940 in common with almost all of their German staff thereafter.<ref name="ARC-Reinhard"/> Wirth had the leading position as the supervisor of six extermination hospitals in the Reich; Hering was the non-medical chief of the [[Sonnenstein Castle|Sonnenstein gassing facility]] in Saxony as well as at the [[Hadamar Euthanasia Centre]].<ref name="ARC-Reinhard"/> 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 [[Nazi gas van|gas van]]s used at [[Chełmno extermination camp]] before December 1941 (and by the ''[[Einsatzgruppen]]'' in the East),{{sfn|Klee|Dressen|Riess|1991|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=ACWKeRF49UYC&pg=PA69 "Chapter 3. A new and better method of killing had to be found. The gas-vans"]. p. 69}} had proven insufficient for the projected number of victims from the [[Holocaust trains]] arriving at the new railway approach ramp.<ref name="Fischel46">{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HrW-b3Q-3ewC&pg=PA46 |author=Jack Fischel |title=The Holocaust |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |isbn=978-0313298790 |pages=46–47, 175 |year=1998 }}</ref>

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.{{sfn|Klee|Dressen|Riess|1991|pp=230–237, 241, 296}} 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]],<ref name="Tregenza2000">Michael Tregenza (2000), [https://archive.today/20080302211812/http://www.mazal.org/archive/documents/Tregenza/Tregenza01.htm "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]].</ref> rebuilt an [[Opel Blitz]] post-office vehicle with the help of a local craftsman into a small gas van.{{sfn|Klee|Dressen|Riess|1991|pp=230–237, 241, 296}} 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.<ref name=HC-1942>{{cite book|editor1-first=Marilyn|editor1-last=Harran|date=2000 |title= The Holocaust Chronicle |publisher=Publications International|chapter=1942: The Final Solution|page=308|isbn= 978-0785329633 |edition= |url=http://www.holocaustchronicle.org/StaticPages/293.html }}</ref>

===Concealment of camp's purpose===
[[File:Belzec extermination camp sign.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|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]].<ref name="Collections">{{cite AV media |author=USHMM |year=2015 |title=Testimony of Bronisław Ragan |publisher=[[USHMM]] Collections |url=http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn507888 |access-date=29 April 2015 }} See also: [http://www.deathcamps.org/belzec/pic/bmap10.jpg sketch by Jan Krupa and Bronisław Ragan] made at the request of the Bełżec Mayor, circa 1971.</ref> The two zones were completely screened from each other and connected only by a narrow corridor called ''der Schlauch'', or "the Tube".<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/> 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,<ref name="Collections"/> and were told by the ''[[Sonderkommando]]'' men that they had arrived at a transit camp.<ref name="Reder"/> To ready themselves for the communal shower, women and children were separated from men.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/> 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.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/> At times, a handful of Jews were selected at the ramp to perform all the manual work involved with extermination.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/>

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.<ref name="Klee_238"/> Removing the bodies from the gas chambers, burying them, sorting and repairing the victims' clothing for shipping was performed by ''Sonderkommando'' work-details.<ref name="Klee_238">{{harvnb|Klee|Dressen|Riess|1991|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=ACWKeRF49UYC&pg=PA238 "Chapter 4. The camp had clean sanitary facilities" pp. 238–244]}}</ref> 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.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/> 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.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/> The German SS and the administration were housed in two cottages outside the camp.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/>

==Camp operation==
[[File:Belzec aerial photo (1944).jpg|thumb|upright=1.5|left|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 [[Trawnikis|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.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/> 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.<ref name="M/MPwB"/>

The second phase of extermination began in July 1942, when new gas chambers were built of brick and mortar on a lightweight foundation,<ref name="bay/kola"/> thus enabling the facility to "process" Jews of the two largest agglomerations nearby including the [[Kraków Ghetto|Kraków]] and [[Lwów Ghetto]]s. 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.<ref name="Reder"/> It could handle over 1,000 victims at a time. The design was soon replicated by the other two Operation Reinhard extermination camps: [[Sobibor extermination camp|Sobibor]] and [[Treblinka extermination camp|Treblinka]].<ref name="M/MPwB"/>

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.<ref name = Klee_242>[[Kurt Gerstein|Gerstein, Kurt]], "Report" dated 4 May 1945, excerpted, translated, and reprinted in Klee, ''The Good Old Days'', page 242</ref> Until December 1942, at least 350,000 to 400,000 Jews were murdered in the new gas chambers.<ref name="M/MPwB"/> 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 ''[[Ordnungspolizei#Special police|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."<ref name="heart-cornides">{{cite web |title=Belzec Death Camp: Eyewitness Report – Wilhelm Cornides |year=2007 |url=http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/belzec/Belzec%20Eyewitness/Belzeceywitness.html |access-date=8 May 2015 |author=SJ H.E.A.R.T |website=HolocaustResearchProject.org |quote=''Sources:'' Martin Gilbert, Peter Longerich, Max Freiherr Du Prel.}}</ref> The last transport of Jews arrived at Bełżec on 11 December 1942.<ref name="M/MPwB"/> 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 [[Pyre#Secular|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.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/>

==Command structure==
{{further|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.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_tZm7cwnGg | archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211117/q_tZm7cwnGg| archive-date=2021-11-17 | url-status=live|title=Belzec – the house of Christian Wirth | date=27 March 2007|via=YouTube |access-date=4 March 2014}}{{cbignore}}</ref> He later moved to the [[Lublin airfield camp]], to oversee [[Operation Reinhard]] till the end. After the [[Operation Achse|German takeover of Italy]] in 1943, he was transferred by Globocnik to serve along with him in his hometown of [[Trieste]].<ref name="retecivica">{{cite journal|url=http://www.retecivica.trieste.it/triestecultura/new/musei/risiera_san_sabba/brochure/Risiera%20inglese%20per%20e-brochure.pdf |title=Risiera di San Sabba. History and Museum |journal=With Selected Bibliography |year=2009 |access-date=2 May 2015 |author=San Sabba |pages=3 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120907014927/http://www.retecivica.trieste.it/triestecultura/new/musei/risiera_san_sabba/brochure/Risiera%20inglese%20per%20e-brochure.pdf |archive-date=7 September 2012 }}</ref> They set up the [[Risiera di San Sabba|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 [[Italian resistance movement|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.{{sfn|Arad|1999|pp=371–372}} 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.{{sfn|Klee|Dressen|Riess|1991|pp=230–237, 241, 296}}

[[File:Belzec - SS staff (1942).jpg|thumb|upright=1.35|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 [[Belzec trial|brought to trial in 1964]], and sentenced to four years and six months in prison, of which he served half before being released.<ref name="Belzec-Prozess">[http://www.holocaust-history.org/german-trials/belzec-urteil.shtml Sentence by the First Munich District Court (Belzec-Prozess – Urteil, ''LG München I'')] {{in lang|de}}. Retrieved {{nowrap|9 August 2013}}.</ref>

===Camp guards===
Belzec camp guards included German ''[[Volksdeutsche]]'' and up to 120 former [[Trawniki men|Soviet prisoners of war]] (mostly Ukrainians) organised into four platoons.<ref name="arc-belzec"/><ref name="Reder">Reder, Rudolf, ''Belzec'', Państwowe Muzeum Oświęcim – Brzezinka, ed. by Franciszek Piper. {{ISBN|8390771535}}</ref> Following [[Operation Barbarossa]], all of them underwent special training at the [[Trawniki concentration camp#Key role of Trawniki men in Final Solution|Trawniki SS camp division]] before they were posted as "Hiwis" (German abbreviation for ''Hilfswilligen'', lit. [[Non-Germans in the German armed forces during World War II|"those willing to help"]]) in the concentration camps as guards and gas chamber operators.{{sfn|Arad|1999|pp=52, 177}} They provided the bulk of ''Wachmänner'' collaborators in all major killing sites of the [[Final Solution]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007397 |author=USHMM |title=Holocaust Encyclopedia: Trawniki |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC |year=2014}}</ref><ref name="Jabłoński">{{cite web |url=http://www.trawniki.hg.pl/traw/obozjab.html |title=Hitlerowski obóz w Trawnikach |work=The camp history |publisher=Trawniki official website |access-date=30 April 2013 |author=Mgr Stanisław Jabłoński (1927–2002) |language=pl}}</ref>

==Gas chambers==
{{main|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.<ref name="Y357">{{cite book |last=Yahil |first=Leni |title=The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932–1945 |year=1991 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=e_aRvKpLUf0C&pg=PA351 |pages=356–357 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0195045239}}</ref> In [[Gerstein Report|his postwar report]] written at the [[Rottweil]] hotel while in the French custody, Gerstein described his visit to Belzec on 18 or 19 August 1942.<ref name = Klee_242/> 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,<ref name="H.E.206">Holocaust Encyclopedia, [http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007206 "Belzec: Chronology"] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2013.</ref> 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.<ref name="cymet274">{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8fUJ9pK8aeYC&pg=PA274 |page=274 |title=History vs. Apologetics: The Holocaust, the Third Reich, and the Catholic Church | publisher=Lexington Books | isbn=978-0739132951 | date=2012 | access-date=3 May 2015 | author=David Cymet}}</ref>

{{blockquote|''Unterscharführer'' Hackenholt was making great efforts to get the engine running. But it doesn't go. Captain [[Christian Wirth|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.{{efn|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.{{sfn|Arad|1999|p=31}}{{sfn|Klee|Dressen|Riess|1991|p=230}} }} The people wait inside the gas chambers. In vain. They can be heard weeping "like in the synagogue", says Professor [[Wilhelm Pfannenstiel|Pfannenstiel]],{{efn|Before World War II, [[Wilhelm Pfannenstiel|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.{{sfn|Klee|Dressen|Riess|1991|p=238}} }} 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.{{efn|The bricks-and-mortar building with the new gas chambers had six cubicles, each about 25 [[M^2|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 [[Kurt Gerstein|Gerstein]] himself. The above figure was stated in his [[Gerstein Report]] at face value. —from "End Notes" by [[Robin O'Neil]].<ref name="Reder/O'Neil237">{{cite book |section-url=https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/Galicia3/gal212.html#Page229 |section=Appendix 5: Rudolf Reder's ''Bełzec'': The End Product of 'The Rabka Four's' Activities in Distrikt Galicia |publisher=Spiderwize Publishing |via=JewishGen.org |title=The Rabka Four: Instruments of Genocide and Grand Larceny (Poland) |first=Robin |last=O'Neil |author-link=Robin O'Neil |date=2011 |access-date=12 May 2015 |page=237 |oclc=796270628}}</ref>}} 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]]''{{sfn|Arad|1999|loc=p. 102. Another translation of Gerstein's testimony can be found at {{harvtxt|Klee|Dressen|Riess|1991|p=242}}}}}}

== Closure and dismantlement ==
{{multiple image
| align = right
| direction = vertical
| width = 217
| image1 = PL Belzec extermination camp 11.jpg
| caption1 = Bełżec mausoleum. Unloading ramp and cremation rails (historical artefacts).
| image2 = PL Belzec extermination camp 3.jpg
| caption2 = 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.<ref name="Małczyński-42"/>
| image3 = PL Belzec extermination camp 6.jpg
| caption3 = The field of crushed stone serves as grave marker; the entire perimeter contains human ashes mixed with sand.<ref name="Małczyński-42"/>
| alt1 =
}}

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.<ref name="warsawuprising.com">{{cite web |url=http://www.warsawuprising.com/doc/katyn_documents1.htm |title=Commission Findings |work=Transcript, Smolensk 30 April 1943 |publisher=Warsaw Uprising by Project InPosterum |date=30 April 1943 |access-date=15 November 2013 |author=International Katyn Commission |archive-date=3 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303232720/http://www.warsawuprising.com/doc/katyn_documents1.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> The Germans attempted to use the commission's results to drive a wedge between the Allies.<ref name="ipn_eng_katyn">{{cite web |url=http://www.ipn.gov.pl/portal/en/2/77/Decision_to_commence_investigation_into_Katyn_Massacre.html |title=Decision to commence investigation into Katyn Massacre |first=Małgorzata |last=Kużniar-Plota |date=30 November 2004 |publisher=Departmental Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation |access-date=26 August 2013 |archive-date=30 September 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120930075626/http://www.ipn.gov.pl/portal/en/2/77/Decision_to_commence_investigation_into_Katyn_Massacre.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> 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.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/>{{sfn|Arad|1999|pp=371–372}}

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. Any equipment that could be reused was taken by the German and Ukrainian personnel to the concentration camp [[Majdanek 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.{{sfn|Arad|1999|pp=371–372}} After locals started digging for valuables in Bełżec, the Germans installed a permanent guard so that their mass murder would not come to light.<ref name="GoldenHarvest22_26">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qAo-yX2RXtsC&pg=PA24 |title=Golden Harvest: Events at the Periphery of the Holocaust |first1=Jan Tomasz |last1=Gross |first2=Irena Grudzinska |last2=Gross |year= 2012 |publisher=Oxford University Press |pages=22–26 |isbn=978-0199731671 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xZ5Ceq6l0M0C&pg=PA435 |title=World Without Civilization: Mass Murder and the Holocaust, History and Analysis, Volume 1 |first=Robert Melvin |last=Spector |year=2005 |publisher=University Press of America |page=435 |isbn=978-0761829638 }}</ref> 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.{{sfn|Arad|1999|pp=371–372}} This model for guarding and disguising murder sites was also adopted at the [[Treblinka extermination camp|Treblinka]] and Sobibor death camps.{{sfn|Arad|1999|pp=371–372}}

==Victims==
[[File:2 Nota 8.jpg|thumb|left|Page 7 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 [[Institute of National Remembrance|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.<ref name="Małczyński-42">{{cite journal | url=https://www.academia.edu/2626602 | title=Drzewa "żywe pomniki" w Muzeum – Miejscu Pamięci w Bełżcu [Trees as living monuments at Bełżec] | journal=Współczesna Przeszłość, 125–140, Poznań 2009 | date=19 January 2009 | access-date=8 August 2013 | author=Jacek Małczyński | pages=39–46}}</ref> This number became widely accepted in the literature. [[Raul Hilberg]] gave a figure of 550,000.<ref name="Hilberg-pg">Raul Hilberg, ''The Destruction of the European Jews'', Yale University Press, 2003, revised hardcover edition, {{ISBN|0300095570}}.</ref> [[Yitzhak Arad]] accepted 600,000 as minimum,{{sfn|Arad|1999|pp=52, 177}} and the sum in his table of Bełżec deportations by the city exceeded 500,000.{{sfn|Arad|1999|pp=52, 177}} Józef Marszałek calculated 500,000.<ref>{{cite book | author=Joseph Poprzeczny | year=2004 |chapter=Notes to Chapter VII |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2arPruq8lhIC&pg=PA400 | title=Odilo Globocnik, Hitler's Man in the East | publisher=McFarland | via=Google Books | access-date=9 August 2013 | page=400 | isbn=978-0786481460}}</ref> British historian [[Robin O'Neil]] once gave an estimate of about 800,000 based on his investigations at the site.<ref>[[Robin O'Neil]], [http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/belzec/Belzec.html A Reassessment: Resettlement Transports to Belzec, March–December 1942]. ''JewishGen'', Yizkor Book Project. Retrieved 9 August 2013.</ref> German historians [[Dieter Pohl]] and Peter Witte,<ref name="witte-tyas"/> 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.<ref name="Tregenza1988">{{citation |last=Tregenza |first=Michael |title=Report on the Archeological Investigation at the Site of the Former NAZI Extermination Camp in Belzec, Poland, 1997–98 |location=Lublin |year=1998 |url=http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/ftp.py?camps//aktion.reinhard/belzec/Archeological_Report/ |access-date=4 September 2015 |archive-date=5 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305022224/http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/ftp.py?camps//aktion.reinhard/belzec/Archeological_Report/ |url-status=dead }}</ref>

[[File:Hoefletelegram.jpg|thumb|right|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.<ref name="witte-tyas"/> 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#1939-1945: The Reichsbahn in the Second World War and the Holocaust|Deutsche Reichsbahn (DRG)]].<ref name="witte-tyas">{{cite journal |last1=Witte |first1=Peter |last2=Tyas |first2=Stephen |date=Winter 2001 |title=A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of Jews during 'Einsatz Reinhardt' 1942 |journal=Holocaust and Genocide Studies |volume=15 |issue=3 |pages=468–486 |doi=10.1093/hgs/15.3.468 |doi-access=free | issn = 1476-7937 }}</ref> 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."<ref name="Pohl-Witte">{{cite journal | doi=10.1080/13501670108577932 | title=The number of victims of belżec extermination camp: A faulty reassessment | journal=East European Jewish Affairs | volume=31 | pages=15–22 | year=2001 | last1=Pohl | first1=Dieter | last2=Witte | first2=Peter | s2cid=162068368 }}</ref>

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.<ref name="Mazur">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-exile|Polish government in London]]. {{cite web |url=http://www.polishresistance-ak.org/13%20Article.htm |title=The ZWZ-AK Bureau of Information and Propaganda |work=Essays and Articles |publisher=Polish Home Army Ex-Servicemen Association, London Branch |year=2013 |access-date=1 December 2013 |author=Grzegorz Mazur |archive-date=27 October 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121027095031/http://www.polishresistance-ak.org/13%20Article.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> 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.{{sfn|Arad|1999|pp=52, 177}} The [[Deutsche Reichsbahn#Holocaust|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.<ref name="Encyclopedia"/>

The Höfle's numbers were repeated in [[Korherr Report]] suggesting their common origin. Other sources, like Westermann's report,<ref name="Gilbert217">For the Westermann's Report, see {{cite book |title=Holocaust Journey: Traveling in Search of the Past |author=Martin Gilbert |author-link=Martin Gilbert |page=217 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AAg4D2xaNV0C |quote=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].|isbn=978-0231109659 |date= 1999 |publisher=Columbia University Press }}</ref> contain the exact data about the number of deported persons, but only estimates of the numbers of those who died in transit.<ref name="Gilbert217"/>

==Post-war==
{{multiple image
| align             = right
| direction         = vertical
| width             = 217
| image1            = PL Belzec extermination camp 9.jpg
| caption1          = 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.<ref name="Małczyński-42"/>
| image2            = PL Belzec extermination camp 5.jpg
| caption2          = 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.<ref name="Małczyński-42"/>
| image3            = Bełżec extermination camp 2010 001.JPG
| caption3          = The [[Ohel (grave)|ohel]] of the Belzec mausoleum
| image4            = PL Belzec extermination camp 2.jpg
| caption4          = [[Bełżec Museum and Memorial Site|Belzec extermination camp museum]]
}}

Grave robbing at the site resumed after the German guard fled for the approaching [[Red Army]].<ref name="GoldenHarvest22_26"/> 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.<ref name="belzec.org-0">{{cite web |url=http://belzec.org.pl/upamietnienie.php?site=dawne&id=1 |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20090131085454/http://belzec.org.pl/upamietnienie.php?site=dawne&id=1 | archivedate=2009-01-31 | title=Dawne upamiętnienie: pół wieku zapomnienia (Half-a-century of forgetting) | work=Camp history and photographs | publisher=Obóz Zagłady w Bełżcu (Belzec extermination camp museum) | year=2005 | accessdate=February 9, 2013 | format=Internet Archive 2009 capture}}</ref> 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.<ref>Kopciowski, A. "Anti-Jewish Incidents in the Lublin Region in the Early Years after World War II." Zaglada Zydów. Studia i Materialy (Holocaust. Studies and Materials) 3 (2007): 188"</ref> 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.<ref name="belzec.org-0"/> 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.<ref name="belzec.org-1">{{cite web | url=http://belzec.org.pl/upamietnienie.php?site=dawne&id=2 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090202163013/http://belzec.org.pl/upamietnienie.php?site=dawne&id=2 | archive-date=2 February 2009 | title=Dawne upamiętnienie: pół wieku zapomnienia (Half-a-century of forgetting) | work=Camp history and photographs | publisher=Obóz Zagłady w Bełżcu (Belzec extermination camp museum) | year=2005 | access-date=9 February 2013 | format=Internet Archive 2009 capture}}</ref>

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.<ref name="belzec.org-1"/>

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.<ref name="belzec.org-1"/> 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.<ref name="majdanek.eu-Kalendarium">{{cite web | url=http://www.majdanek.eu/articles.php?acid=186 | title=Kalendarium | work=Powstanie Państwowego Muzeum (Creation of the Museum) | publisher=Państwowe Muzeum na Majdanku | access-date=9 April 2013 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110213052322/http://www.majdanek.eu/articles.php?acid=186 | archive-date=13 February 2011 }}</ref>

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]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://motl.org/?p=63|archive-url=https://archive.today/20140611045634/http://motl.org/?p=63|url-status=dead|archive-date=11 June 2014|title=March of the Living}}</ref> Her mother, Ethel Helfgott, was among the victims in Bełżec.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://db.yadvashem.org/names/nameDetails.html?itemId=3582903&language=en|title=Yad Vashem}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://marchoftheliving.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/CJN-Hitler-Did-Not-Win-April-8-2010.pdf|title=March of the Living}}</ref>

==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:Muzeum Archeologiczne i Etnograficzne w Łodzi|(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 {{Convert|480|m2|abbr=on}} and was {{Convert|4.8|m|abbr=on}} deep. The total volume of these mass graves was estimated at {{Convert|21000|m3|abbr=unit|e6ft3}}.<ref name="bay/kola"/> Air photo analysis suggests that these 33 mass graves were not the only graves at Bełżec extermination camp.<ref>Alex Bay,'The Reconstruction of Belzec', https://web.archive.org/web/20150905054338/http://www.holocaust-history.org/belzec/</ref>

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."<ref name="bay/kola">{{cite book |author=Andrzej Kola |orig-year=2000 |year=2015 |title=Belzec. The Nazi Camp for Jews in the Light of Archaeological Sources |others=Translated from Polish by Ewa Józefowicz and Mateusz Józefowicz |location=Warsaw-Washington |publisher=The Council for the Protection of Memory of Combat and Martyrdom – The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |isbn=978-8390559063 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JdkWAQAAIAAJ&q=wax-fat |access-date=3 May 2015}} Also in: Archeologists reveal new secrets of Holocaust, Reuters News, 21 July 1998.</ref>

==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.<ref name="arc-belzec"/> The railway embankments used to be lined with bodies.<ref name="heart-cornides"/>

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 in Poland (1944–1946)|anti-communist resistance]] organisation [[Tajna Organizacja Wojskowa|TOW]]. Following the war's end, Hirszman had joined [[Ministry of Public Security (Poland)|MBP]], a secret police organisation created by the new [[History of Poland (1945–1989)|Stalinist regime in Poland]], to crush the anti-communist underground.<ref name="Piotrowski, 131">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NBbnrEMswbUC&pg=PA131 |title=Poland's holocaust |first=Tadeusz |last=Piotrowski |year=2007 |page=131 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-0786429134 }}</ref> His murder was before he was able to give a full account of his experiences at the camp.<ref name="Libionka">{{cite web | url=http://www.jewish.org.pl/index.php/historia-mainmenu-66/5457-qoboz-zagady-w-becuq.html | title=Obóz zagłady w Bełżcu (Death camp in Bełżec) | work=Jewish.org.pl Portal Społeczności Żydowskiej | publisher=Państwowe Muzeum na Majdanku ([[Majdanek State Museum]]) |year=2015 | access-date=11 May 2015 | author=Dariusz Libionka | author-link=Dariusz Libionka | quote=Obóz zagłady w Bełżcu w relacjach ocalonych i zeznaniach polskich świadków (Testimonies of survivors and witnesses). | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141105230352/http://www.jewish.org.pl/index.php/historia-mainmenu-66/5457-qoboz-zagady-w-becuq.html | archive-date=5 November 2014 | url-status=dead }}</ref>

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 [[Joseph Bau|Józef Bau]], a Holocaust survivor who studied at the [[Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts|Academy of Fine Arts]]. It was reprinted in 1999 by the [[Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum]] with translation by Margaret M. Rubel.<ref name="catalog">{{cite web | url=http://searchworks.stanford.edu/?q=%22Reder%2C+Rudolf%2C+1881-%22&search_field=search_author | title=Bełżec. Author/Creator: Reder, Rudolf, 1881– | work=Stanford University Libraries' official online search | publisher=Imprint: Kraków, Centralna Żydowska Komisja Historyczna, 1946 |year=2015 | access-date=11 May 2015 | author=SearchWorks catalog | pages=1}}</ref> 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 [[Josef Oberhauser|Oberhauser]], who was sentenced to 4½ years of imprisonment, and released after serving half of his sentence.<ref name="Elsner">{{cite web|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-elsner/a-new-nazi-war-crimes-tri_b_438428.html |title=A New Nazi War Crimes Trial – And This Time It's Personal |work=Internet Archive |date=29 March 2010 |access-date=12 May 2015 |author=Alan Elsner |quote=Ernst Klee, Willi Dreßen, Volker Rieß: ''Schöne Zeiten.'' S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt, 1988, {{ISBN|310039304X}}. |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150508212329/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-elsner/a-new-nazi-war-crimes-tri_b_438428.html |archive-date=8 May 2015 }}</ref>

== See also ==
* [[Belzec trial|Bełżec trial]] of eight former SS staff of Bełżec extermination camp in the mid-1960s, Munich
* [[Chełmno trials]] of the [[Chełmno extermination camp]] personnel, held in Poland and in Germany, decided almost twenty years apart
* [[Grojanowski Report]] by Chełmno prisoner, [[Szlama Ber Winer]]
* [[List of Nazi concentration camps]]
* [[Majdanek trials]], the longest Nazi war crimes trial in history

==References==
===Informational notes===
{{notelist}}

===Citations===
{{Reflist}}

===Bibliography===
* {{cite book |last=Arad |first=Yitzhak |author-link=Yitzhak Arad |orig-year=1987 |year=1999 |title=Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps |publisher=Indiana University Press |location=Bloomington |isbn=978-0-253-34293-5 |url=https://archive.org/details/belzecsobibortre0000arad |url-access=registration |quote=Belzec. |access-date=10 May 2015 }}
* 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 Verlag|Metropol]], Berlin 2007. {{ISBN|978-3-938690-50-5}}. {{in lang|de}}
* [[Raul Hilberg|Hilberg, Raul]], ''The Destruction of the European Jews'', Yale University Press, 2003, revised hardcover edition, {{ISBN|0-300-09557-0}}.
* [https://archive.org/stream/BelzecSobiborTreblinka.HolocaustDenialAndOperationReinhard.ACritique/BelzecSobiborTreblinkaHolocaustControversies#page/n1/mode/2up Bełżec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard]. Holocaust Controversies, 2011.
* {{cite book |last1=Klee |first1=Ernst |last2=Dressen |first2=Willi |last3=Riess |first3=Volker |author-link1=Ernst Klee |year=1991 |title=The "Good Old Days" – The Holocaust as Seen by its Perpetrators and Bystanders |translator=Deborah Burnstone |publisher=Konecky Konecky |isbn=978-1-56852-133-6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ACWKeRF49UYC}}
* [https://www.belzec.eu/en Museum-Memorial Site in Bełżec (official website)]. Museum and Memorial Site in Bełżec.
* {{cite book | last=Musiał | first=Bogdan | author-link=Bogdan Musia | year=2000 | chapter=The Origins of 'Operation Reinhard': The Decision-Making Process for the Mass Murder of the Jews in the Generalgouvernment |editor1=David Cesarani |editor2=Sarah Kavanaugh | title= Holocaust: From the persecution of the Jews to mass murder  | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y8bLEld50rIC |series=Yad Vashem Studies, No. 28 | translator=William Templer | publisher=Psychology Press | access-date=9 May 2015ł | isbn=978-0-415-27511-8 }}
* 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, {{OCLC|3740209}}. {{in lang|de}}
* Reder, Rudolf, ''Bełżec'', Kraków, 1946
* United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – Bełżec and [https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/belzec-key-dates Timeline]
* Chris Webb, Victor Smart & Carmelo Lisciotto (2009), The Bełżec Death Camp. Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team (Internet Archive). Retrieved 10 May 2015.
* [[Izhak Weinberg]]. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGImfPKrlyI A Polish Tune]. Eleven minute video that portrays accurately what happened.
* 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|0-19-922506-0}}.
* Yad Vashem – About the Holocaust – [https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/pdf-drupal/de/education/Belzec.pdf Bełżec]
* [[Yad Vashem]] (2015), Resources about Bełżec. Text, maps and photographs at The Holocaust Resource Center website.

==External links==
{{Commons category|Belzec extermination camp}}
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEQdVlVgSY4 Concentration camps of Nazi Germany] on [[YouTube]]

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