The Belzec extermination center.

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Belzec

 The Belzec extermination center began operations March 17th, 1942 and ended operations December 1942. It is estimated that about 600,000 Jews were murdered at Belzec and probably dozen thousands of Gypsies.

    Belzec extermination camp was quite small, with a circumference of 1,220 yards. It was divided into two sections, each one surrounded by a barbed wire fence. There were watch towers all around the main perimeter. The first camp was split into two parts. The smaller area contained the administration buildings and the Ukrainians barracks. The larger part included the spur line which carried rail trucks into the camp, an expanse where the Jewish deportees were sorted into groups of men or women and children, the barracks where they were forced to undress and were shaven, storerooms for their clothes, personal objects, and huts for the Jewish workers who were employed by the SS to carry out the duties associated with the murder process.

      The second camp housed the gas chambers and burial pits. It was reached by a long, narrow passageway with barbed wire fencing on either side, known as 'the tube'. The extermination site was screened off from the rest of the camp by leafy branches intertwined with the barbed wire.

    Belzec, was located on the Lublin-Lvov railroad line, and built between November 1, 1941 and March of 1942. The killing, of Jews from Krakow and Lvov districts where the death camp was situated, began on March 17, 1942. The first SS men showed up at Belzec in October of 1941, to begin recruitment of laborers for construction.  Belzec was situated in the Lublin district forty-seven miles north of the major city of Lvov, conveniently between the large Jewish populations of south east Poland and eastern Galicia. 

        A Breitman said.

“Belzec was the first pure extermination camp to begin operations in the region. There were only a few hundred worker Jews there (at a time), most used in the killing facilities or in the recovery of clothing and items of value from the dead. The first SS men showed up at Belzec in October 1941 to recruit construction workers to build the facilities. Himmler's office had reported Globocnik's progress to Oswald Pohl, head of what soon became the SS Economic-Administrative Main Office (WVHA), preparing Pohl for cooperation with Globocnik. Pohl's office had reported to Himmler that it could no longer obtain sufficient clothing or textiles for the Waffen-SS and the concentration camps. Himmler replied that he could make available a large mass of raw materials for clothing and he gave Globocnik responsibility for delivering them. “

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The gassing at Belzec began in March 1942 under the supervision of its first commandant, Christian Wirth he decided to supply the fixed gas chamber with gas produced by the internal-combustion engine of a motorcar. He used universally available gasoline and diesel fuel. He worked on the “euthanasia” gassings which ended up at Belzec. Belzec was designed to gas Jews and were under Globocnik's supervision, he commanded 20-30 SS men and over 100 Ukrainians.

      The gassing experts lived separately from the other SS and police, and they were not carried on the list of Globocnik's regular ...

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