Belzec

Belzec camp was established on 1st november 1941 in Poland .
The camp was divided in two sections , then in 4 parts ; administration , extermination , barracks , storage of plundered goods .
This camp was a model of "Aktion Reinhard" , the murder program .
As with most camps , it had 20 - 30 SS men and about 120 Ukrainian guards .

The trainplatform , the selection , the undressing , the shaving , all are camp procedures coming back in every camp . Again they were told that this was just a transit camp ... .
It started with 3 gaschambers but soon expanded to 6 gaschambers , as the (mostly) Jew prisoners kept coming .
Next to the gaschambers were the burial pits .
To reach the chambers , prisoners had to pass the "tube" , this was a narrow path between two barbed wire fences with watchtowers .

The gaschamber was camouflaged from the rest of the camp , by barbedwire and foilage of trees .
Most prisoners were weakend by the transport and offered no resistance to the guards .
The gaschambers were double walled wooden barracks , these walls were filled with sand .
They were halflined with tin and had two airtight doors , one for entry and one to remove the corpses .
Once inside and the door shut , the process would take about 30 minutes .
The gas was pumped into the shower lines by a diesel engine wich was outside .
It was then selected Jewish prisoners who dragged the bodies out and check for gold teeth to their final destination ; massgraves .
Other selected Jewish prisoners went through the clothing and luggage to check for valuables .
To process a train of prisoners it took 3 hours ... .

But death also came to these workers , 1000 were kept alive to work for the SS .
The camp was put on a hold period as it was to be refined and allowed the construction of 6 gaschambers in 1942 ..
This way they could gas about 1200 Jews at a time and the trainloads would come smoother .
Some Jews were kept alive as craftsmen , but also they would be killed ... .

The camp seized to excist in 1943 , the massgraves were opened and the bodies burned , the survivors were transported to Sobibor death camp to be murdered .
Only a handfull survived Belzec ... .

The locals tried to dig for valuables and were drifted away by the guards .
Finally the camp was torn down completly and like Treblinka , turned into a farm and given to one of the Ukrainian guards to farm it .

It's estimated that 600.000 Jews were killed in Belzec and dozen thousands of gypsies ... .