Imagine you are a Jew and live in the Lvov region around April 1942 and the Nazis are raiding your home and telling you and your family to go in train cars, thinking you are going to a transit camp but are actually going to an extermination camp in Belzec. This is what happened to a lot of Jews at this time because Hitler and his followers wanted to get rid of the Jews. Belzec extermination camp was a part of Operation Reinhard along with Treblinka and Sobibor and was a bigger part of the Holocaust then some people think. Belzec began operations March 17, 1942 and ended in December 1942, (Holocaust Museum). This research paper will be about the background of the Belzec camp, the different sections of this camp, and the Belzec gassing process.
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This camp unlike other camps was not part of or converted from any other recognized camp facility. “Belzec was built as a part of Aktion Reinhard, solely for the extermination of the Jews,”(Holocaust Museum). The camp was originally built and finished by November 1st, 1941, but did not begin operations then. Belzec consisted of two different camps split up into three parts for all different things. The first section was the administration section which is where the Jews and other people had to sign in and all that things. Next to that was the buildings for the storage of all the goods they took. Lastly was the extermination section which was the section where the gassing process was carried out. According to the Holocaust Museum, “Belzec was located in South Eastern Poland, near the small village of Belzec, on the Lublin-Lvov railway line for easy transportation of Jews”. Belzec was a fairly small camp only about 1,220 yards all together. The two sections of Belzec were each surrounded by a barbed wire fence to keep the prisoners …show more content…
The first camp was split into two different parts itself. The smaller area contained the administration buildings and the workers barracks. The larger of the two areas included the spur line, an expanse where Jews were sorted into groups of men or women and children, barracks, storerooms, and huts. Rail trucks with Jews and other people were carried into Belzec on the spur line. In the barracks they were forced to undress and the workers there cut their hair. All of their personal belongings, clothes, and other things they had were all put into the storerooms of this section. Jewish workers who were employed by the SS to carry out the duties associated with the murder process stayed in the huts. The second camp contained the gas chambers and burial pits. It was secluded off from the rest of the camp by barbed wire intertwined branches to obscure that part from being discovered. Belzec had three gas chambers all housed in a wooden building at first, all of them used carbon monoxide from an engine stored in a room in front of the gas chambers in the murder process. It changed to six gas chambers housed in a brick and concrete building later in Belzec’s operations. When it changed to six gas chambers instead of three they used both carbon monoxide and Zyklon B pellets to carry out the process of gassing. The SS soldiers had a camouflage net stretched over the building housing the gas
This camp unlike other camps was not part of or converted from any other recognized camp facility. “Belzec was built as a part of Aktion Reinhard, solely for the extermination of the Jews,”(Holocaust Museum). The camp was originally built and finished by November 1st, 1941, but did not begin operations then. Belzec consisted of two different camps split up into three parts for all different things. The first section was the administration section which is where the Jews and other people had to sign in and all that things. Next to that was the buildings for the storage of all the goods they took. Lastly was the extermination section which was the section where the gassing process was carried out. According to the Holocaust Museum, “Belzec was located in South Eastern Poland, near the small village of Belzec, on the Lublin-Lvov railway line for easy transportation of Jews”. Belzec was a fairly small camp only about 1,220 yards all together. The two sections of Belzec were each surrounded by a barbed wire fence to keep the prisoners …show more content…
The first camp was split into two different parts itself. The smaller area contained the administration buildings and the workers barracks. The larger of the two areas included the spur line, an expanse where Jews were sorted into groups of men or women and children, barracks, storerooms, and huts. Rail trucks with Jews and other people were carried into Belzec on the spur line. In the barracks they were forced to undress and the workers there cut their hair. All of their personal belongings, clothes, and other things they had were all put into the storerooms of this section. Jewish workers who were employed by the SS to carry out the duties associated with the murder process stayed in the huts. The second camp contained the gas chambers and burial pits. It was secluded off from the rest of the camp by barbed wire intertwined branches to obscure that part from being discovered. Belzec had three gas chambers all housed in a wooden building at first, all of them used carbon monoxide from an engine stored in a room in front of the gas chambers in the murder process. It changed to six gas chambers housed in a brick and concrete building later in Belzec’s operations. When it changed to six gas chambers instead of three they used both carbon monoxide and Zyklon B pellets to carry out the process of gassing. The SS soldiers had a camouflage net stretched over the building housing the gas