History of Belzec

1941, SS and police authorities in Lublin District began construction of a killing center on the site of the former Belzec labor camp. The choice of location was dictated by good rail connections and proximity to significant Jewish populations in the Lvov, Krakow, and Lublin districts of the General government. The facility was finished in the late winter of 1942 as part of what later would be called Operation Reinhard (also called Aktion Reinhard), the plan implemented by the SS and Police Leader in Lublin to murder the Jews of the General government. Belzec began operations on March 17, 1942; the first Jewish communities deported to Belzec were those of Lublin and Lvov. Belzec was the second German killing center, and the first of the Operation Reinhard killing centers, to begin operation.

Located along the Lublin-Lvov railway line, the killing center was only 1,620 feet from the Belzec railway station. A small rail siding connected the camp and the station. The SS staff and auxiliary police guards assigned to the camp were housed in a separate compound near the railroad station.

The authorities at Belzec killing center consisted of a small staff of German SS and police officials (between 20 and 30) and a police auxiliary guard unit of between 90 and 120 men, all of whom were either former Soviet prisoners of war of various nationalities or Ukrainian and Polish civilians selected or recruited for this purpose. All members of the guard unit were trained at a special facility of the SS and Police Leader in Lublin, the Trawniki training camp. Commandants of the Belzec camp were SS Major Christian Wirth until June 1942 and then SS First Lieutenant Gottlieb Hering from June 1942 until June 1943.

The Germans divided Belzec into a combined administration-reception area and a separate area, in which the SS and police could carry out the mass murder hidden from view of victims waiting in the reception area. A narrow