History of Belzec

osed path called the "tube" connected the two sections of the killing center. The reception area held the railway siding and a ramp. The area where the mass murder took place included the gas chambers and mass graves. Rail tracks ran from the gas chambers to the burial pits. Each side of the camp measured 886 feet. Fine boughs woven into the barbed-wire fence and trees planted around the perimeter served as camouflage to prevent curious outsiders from seeing operations inside the camp.

Gassing operations at Belzec began in mid-March 1942. Trains of 40 to 60 freight cars, with 80 to 100 people crowded into each car, arrived at the Belzec railway station. Twenty freight cars at a time were detached and brought from the station into the camp. The arriving Jews were then ordered to disembark at the platform of the reception area. German SS and police personnel announced that the Jewish deportees had arrived at a transit camp and were to hand over all valuables in their possession. Initially, men were separated from women and children, though in later months, as transport arrivals became more chaotic due to increased awareness of the victims of what would happen, the Germans and the Trawniki-trained auxiliaries could not always implement this segregation. The Jews were forced to undress and run through the "tube," which led directly into gas chambers deceptively labeled as showers. Once the chamber doors were sealed, auxiliary police guards started an engine located outside the building housing the gas chambers. Carbon monoxide was funneled into the gas chambers, killing all those inside. The process was then repeated with deportees in the next 20 freight cars.

Members of the Sonderkommandos (special detachments)—groups of prisoners selected to remain alive as forced laborers—worked in the killing area. They removed bodies from the gas chambers and buried the victims in mass graves. Other prisoners selected for