Belzec extermination camp

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Belzec extermination camp (Poland)
Bełżec
Bełżec
Warsaw
Warsaw
Map of present-day Poland

The Belzec extermination camp in Bełżec (in today's Lublin Voivodeship ) was a German extermination camp , in which 434,508 people were murdered between March 1942 and December 1942, according to the SS count, during the Nazi era . The Belzec camp was established during the Second World War, alongside Sobibór and Treblinka, as the first of the three extermination camps as part of the " Reinhardt Campaign ".

1940: Bełżec labor camp

During the occupation from 1939 to 1945, the municipality of Bełżec belonged to the German-administered part of Poland known as the Generalgouvernement . Sinti arrived in Bełżec in May 1940 and were deported there from Czechoslovakia, Poland and Germany . One of these deportees, Gottfried Weiß from Hamburg, reported that they were pulling the fence for a planned labor camp there . A short time later the Sinti were replaced by Jews from Lublin , Radom and Warsaw . From Bełżec these approximately 10,000 Polish Jews were distributed to numerous different branch camps and, from August 1940, mainly used for earthworks to build fortifications on the Soviet border between Bug and San . In the village of Bełżec itself, around 3,000 Jews were temporarily housed on an estate, near a mill and in a locomotive shed. These labor camps were disbanded in October 1940. The Bełżec extermination camp was independently set up much later in a clearing.

1942: extermination camp

On November 1, 1941, the construction of a camp began under the central construction management of the SS, which received a permanently installed gas chamber . This camp in Bełżec was the first of three extermination camps of the " Aktion Reinhardt ", which were intended solely for the physical extermination of people. The three camps were set up in remote areas and had siding so that large numbers of people could be brought there and killed without causing any major fuss. Initially, the Jews in eastern Poland were primarily chosen as victims, but later other areas and so-called "Gypsy hybrids" were included in the extermination campaign.

Christian Wirth, first camp commandant
Decoded radio message from Höfles on January 11, 1943

From December 1941, the camp commandant of Bełżec was SS-Hauptsturmführer Christian Wirth , who was already involved in the murder of disabled people in the German Reich (also Action T4) . Further T4 employees were added from January 1942. After Wirth was appointed inspector for the extermination camps of "Aktion Reinhardt" on August 1, 1942, Gottlieb Hering , who was later also appointed SS-Hauptsturmführer, took over the camp command until the extermination camp was demolished. Hering was added at the end of July 1942 with additional staff who had previously been involved in the “euthanasia program” (Action T4). From the end of 1941 SS-Untersturmführer Schwarz was the deputy camp commandant and head of the extermination area . In addition to some SS men, a company of 60 - later 120 - "Trawniki men" was deployed. Jewish labor detachments were temporarily forced up to 500 people to dispose of the corpses and to recycle their clothes; they were later murdered.

Wirth arrived on site in the second half of December 1941 and carried out the first "test gassings" in February 1942 with a self-built gas truck and in a gas chamber with carbon monoxide gas and engine exhaust. As part of “Aktion Reinhardt”, the first train transport with Jews from the Lublin Ghetto arrived in Bełżec on March 17, 1942 and, like the next, brought people, old people, women and children who were “unable to work” to the killing camp.

75,000 Jews were killed within the next four weeks, after which the transports were temporarily suspended. The capacity of the gas chambers was increased by new buildings; from late summer 1942 an excavator was used to excavate the earth. In a second phase starting in August 1942, Jews from all over the General Government were brought in as victims. While initially a maximum of 15 freight wagons could be "dispatched" at the same time, after the expansion of the second phase there were 40 freight wagons.

The last transport with victims arrived on December 11, 1942. On December 15, 1942, “non-military” rail transport was banned for weeks; however, according to Robert Kuwałek , the main reason for stopping the killings was the overcrowding of the mass graves . Since November 1942, corpses have been exhumed en masse and burned on large grates made from railroad tracks. The last prisoners deployed there were taken to Sobibór in a railway carriage and killed there immediately. In a cash register they were able to warn the prisoners there, who also dared to revolt there in autumn 1943 . In the spring of 1943, all traces were removed, and later a farm was set up on the site for camouflage. Only three survivors of the extermination camp who publicly presented their camp experiences are known: Rudolf Reder from Lviv, Chaim Hirszman from Janów Lubelski and the Hasidic rabbi Izrael Szapiro from Lviv.

SS-Hauptsturmführer Höfle , an important employee of Globocnik , reported 434,508 killings for Belzec in the so-called Höfle telegram to the SS headquarters in early January 1943. In 2017, Stephan Lehnstaedt spoke about the latest research results by Robert Kuwalek and Sara Berger, which assume a minimum of 440,823 to a maximum of 596,200 victims; he himself considers an estimate of 470,000 to be realistic.

Killing personnel

Camp structure

German aerial view of Belzec; approx. 1944 (buildings are demolished and only drawn in)

NS documents about the camp, its size and development have not survived. Sketches for the arrangement of the camp facilities were only made by contemporary witnesses after the war . However, they are incomplete because the development and the location of the mass graves changed in a second phase of expansion.

A railroad track led from the station to the camp gate. The camp consisted of an area measuring approximately 265 × 275 meters, which was fenced off and divided into two areas. One part contained administration buildings and barracks for stripping and storing luggage. Barracks were later added for Jewish prisoners who sorted clothes and worked in the laundry. In the other camp complex there were several mortuary pits, accommodations for the Jews of the Sonderkommando and the gas chambers .

The “hose”, a narrow 70-meter path delimited by barbed wire , led from the barracks to the gas chambers. Initially, the victims were killed by introducing  pure carbon monoxide gas from steel bottles , as in the T4 killing centers . Engine exhausts were later introduced; the information on the type of engine is contradictory and cannot be conclusively clarified.

Prosecuting the perpetrators

In 1963 there was the Belzec trial of individual perpetrators in Munich , of whom only Josef Oberhauser was sentenced on January 21, 1965 to four years and six months in prison for aiding and abetting collective murder in 300,000 cases. The district court approved of the other defendants a putative emergency and put them out of prosecution in January 1964.

Memorial site

The new mausoleum (2006)

Until at least 1956 the site of the former extermination camp was accessible without a fence and without supervision. It was not until the end of 1963 that the first memorial was erected with the inscription “In memory of the victims of the Hitler terror”, which avoided reference to the Jewish victims. In 1995 the American Jewish Committee in Warsaw signed a contract for a new memorial. Before construction work began, archaeological investigations were carried out from 1997, during which 33 mass graves could be located.

In 2004 a new memorial was opened based on designs by the Polish sculptors Andrzej Sołyga, Zdzisław Pidek and Marcin Roszczyk, which shows the topography of the camp and the extermination machinery where until then only leveled earth could be seen. At the end of a symbolic ramp there is a museum building that takes the shape of a train.

Authentic photos

In 2015, a private collection with more than 300 pictures from the possession of SS-Untersturmführer Johann Niemann was discovered. Niemann documented his entire career in the SS in two albums and further individual photos. From the Esterwegen concentration camp to the so-called “ euthanasia ” crimes to “ Aktion Reinhard ” in Belzec and Sobibor , where he was largely responsible for the implementation of the murder program. The pictures also show the Trawniki man Iwan Demjanjuk, who was convicted in Munich in 2011, for the first time on the camp grounds in Sobibor.

Movie

  • Guillaume Moscovitz (Director): Belzec. Documentation, F, 2005, 100 min.

On the basis of reports from the few survivors and interviews with residents of the area, G. Moscovitz succeeds in reconstructing part of the history of the camp. (Regarding the content and the intention: Moscovitz, born in 1969, keeps talking about the fact that this film is almost too late. Precisely because there are only four survivors of this death factory, it was so important for Moscovitz to honor the memory of the dead. Shot he took it from the tripod and it reminds of Claude Lanzmann's "Shoah", which influenced him. The film contains no commentary. His aim was to mediate between individual fates and the intangible horror that comes from the abstract numbers.)

  • Belzec extermination camp memorial
  • PL Belzec extermination camp 1.jpg
  • Bełżec extermination camp 2010 001.JPG
  • PL Belzec extermination camp 6.jpg
  • PL Belzec extermination camp 11.jpg
  • PL Belzec extermination camp 4.jpg

  • Belzec extermination camp museum

  • PL Belzec extermination camp 8.jpg
  • PL Belzec extermination camp 5.jpg
  • PL Belzec extermination camp 9.jpg
  • PL Belzec extermination camp 3.jpg

See also

literature

  • Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 8: Riga, Warsaw, Vaivara, Kaunas, Płaszów, Kulmhof / Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57237-1 .
  • Yitzhak Arad : Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1987, ISBN 0-253-34293-7 .
  • Eugen Kogon , Hermann Langbein , Adalbert Rückerl (ed.): National Socialist mass killings by poison gas. Fischer paperback. Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-596-24353-X .
  • Robert Kuwałek : The Bełżec Extermination Camp. From the polish. trans. by Steffen Hänschen. With a preface by Ingo Loose. Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86331-079-0 .
  • Adalbert Rückerl (Ed.): National Socialist Extermination Camps in the Mirror of German Criminal Trials. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-423-02904-8 .
  • Günter Schlusche: Recording a death zone. Memorial, cemetery and museum in Belzec / Poland. Planning: Solyga, Andrzej; Pidek, Zdislaw; Roszczyk, Marcin (architects); Photos: Krynski, Wijciech, Warsaw. In: Bauwelt , 2005, Vol .: 96, No. 22, pp. 22-27.
  • Peter Witte, Stephen Tyas: A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of Jews during "Einsatz Reinhardt" 1942. In: Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 15, No. 3, winter 2001, ISBN 0-19-922506-0 (Höfle numbers).
  • Jan H. Fahlbusch: In the center of mass murder. Ernst Zierke in the Belzec extermination camp. In: Andreas Mix (ed.): Concentration camp crime. Contributions to the history of the National Socialist concentration camps. Metropol-Verlag, Berlin 2007.
  • Nikolaus Wachsmann : KL: The history of the National Socialist concentration camps. Siedler Verlag, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-88680-827-4 .

Photos from Sobibor. The Niemann Collection on Holocaust and National Socialism. Edited by Bildungswerk Stanisław Hantz eV and the Ludwigsburg Research Center of the University of Stuttgart, Metropol-Verlag, Berlin 2020, ISBN 978-3-86331-506-1 .

Web links

Commons : Belzec extermination camp  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Witte and Stephen Tyas: A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of Jews during 'Einsatz Reinhardt' 1942 . In: Holocaust and Genocide Studies , Vol. 15, No. 3, winter 2001, ISBN 0-19-922506-0 ( Höfle-Telegram ).
  2. ↑ Encyclopedia of the Holocaust . Piper Verlag, Munich 1998, Volume 1, p. 14f.
  3. ↑ Linde Apel: Sent to death - The deportation of Jews, Roma and Sinti from Hamburg 1940 to 1945 , Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-940938-30-5 , p. 73.
  4. ↑ Viviane Wünsche: "When the music fell silent ..." . In: State Center for Civic Education Hamburg (Ed.): The National Socialist Persecution of Hamburg Roma and Sinti. 2. actual Edition. Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-929728-73-7 , p. 93 f. / Report by Gottfried Weiß , accessed on February 6, 2008.
  5. ↑ deathcamps beginnings of Belzec , accessed February 6, 2008.
  6. ↑ Belzec Camp History , accessed February 6, 2008.
  7. ^ Sara Berger: Experts of the destruction. The T4 Reinhardt network in the Belzec, Sobibór and Treblinka camps. Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-86854-268-4 (Diss.), P. 43 writes that Richard Thomalla was often ascribed to the construction of Belzec, but that he was still in Kiev.
  8. ^ Sara Berger: Experts of the destruction. The T4 Reinhardt network in the Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka camps. Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-86854-268-4 , pp. 44f.
  9. ^ Sara Berger: Experts of the destruction. The T4 Reinhardt network in the Belzec, Sobibór and Treblinka camps. Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-86854-268-4 , p. 47f / Experiments with Zyklon B are considered "unlikely".
  10. ↑ Thomas Sandkühler: The forced labor camp ... In: Ulrich Herbert , Karin Orth , Christoph Dieckmann : The national socialist concentration camps. Frankfurt 2002, ISBN 3-596-15516-9 , p. 611.
  11. ^ Robert Kuwałek : The Belzec extermination camp. Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86331-079-0 , p. 74.
  12. ↑ Belzec Camp History , accessed October 10, 2014.
  13. ^ Robert Kuwałek : The Bełżec extermination camp. Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86331-079-0 , p. 178.
  14. ↑ Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps . Vol. 8: Riga. Warsaw. Kaunas. Vaivara. Płaszów. Klooga. Chelmno. Belzec. Treblinka. Sobibor. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57237-1 , p. 359.
  15. ↑ Saul Friedländer : The Third Reich and the Jews. The years of persecution 1933 - 1939. The years of annihilation 1939 - 1945. Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-56681-3 , p. 861 and note 91.
  16. ↑ Stephan Lehnstaedt: The core of the Holocaust. Belzec, Sobibór, Treblinka and Aktion Reinhardt. Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-406-70702-5 , p. 84 with note 13 and p. 85.
  17. ↑ mapping s. Annika Wienert: Introducing the camp - the architecture of the National Socialist extermination camps . Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-95808-013-3 , pp. 63–66 / For further information see p. Eugen Kogon et al .: National Socialist mass killings by poison gas. Fischer p. Frankfurt / M. 1986, ISBN 3-596-24353-X and Deathcamp Belzec .
  18. ↑ Saul Friedländer: The Third Reich and the Jews . P. 739.
  19. ↑ Gerstein report ns-archiv.de as well as Kogon: National Socialist Massentötungen ... , p. 193 ( Pfannenstiel ) versus representation at deathcamps deathcamps.org / "Motor des Panzers IV A" at Dieter Pohl: Mass killings by poison gas as part of "Aktion T4" . In: Günther Morsch, Bertrand Perz: New studies on National Socialist mass killings by poison gas. Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-940938-99-2 , p. 191.
  20. ↑ Achim Trunk: The deadly gases. In: Günter Morsch , Bertrand Perz: New studies on National Socialist mass killings by poison gas. Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-940938-99-2 , pp. 18–37 / fuel request for the campaign , accessed on February 7, 2008.
  21. ^ Robert Kuwałek : The Bełżec extermination camp . Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86331-079-0 , p. 327ff (Chapter XVI: Commemoration)
  22. ↑ Topography of Terror : Photos from Sobibor. The Niemann Collection on Holocaust and National Socialism Event announcement
  23. ↑ thalia.de: Photos from Sobibor. The Niemann Collection on Holocaust and National Socialism Book announcement

Coordinates: 50 ° 22 ′ 18 ″  N , 23 ° 27 ′ 27 ″  E