Editing Belzec extermination camp (section)

==Background==
In the [[Second Polish Republic]], the village of Bełżec was situated between the two major cities in the [[Kresy|southeastern part of the country]] including [[Lublin]] {{convert|47|mi|order=flip}} northwest of Bełżec, and [[Lwów Voivodeship|Lwów]] to the southeast ({{langx|de|link=no|Lemberg}}, now [[Lviv]], Ukraine) with the largest Jewish populations in the region. Bełżec fell within the [[German occupation of Poland|German zone of occupation]] in accordance with the [[German-Soviet Pact]] against Poland. Originally, [[Forced labour under German rule during World War II|Jewish forced labour]] was brought into the area in April 1940 for the construction of [[Nisko Plan#Burggraben project|military defence facilities]] of the German strategic plan codenamed [[Operation Otto]] against the Soviet advance beyond [[German-Soviet Frontier Treaty|their common frontier]] following the [[Soviet invasion of Poland|Soviet invasion of 1939]].<ref name="M/MPwB">{{citation |title=Historia Niemieckiego Obozu Zagłady w Bełżcu [History of the Belzec extermination camp] |publisher=National Bełżec Museum & Monument of Martyrology [Muzeum – Miejsce Pamięci w Bełżcu] |url=http://www.belzec.eu/articles.php?acid=77 |language=pl |access-date=14 March 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151029003413/http://www.belzec.eu/articles.php?acid=77 |archive-date=29 October 2015 }}</ref>

[[File:Deportacja Żydów z Zamościa do obozu zagłady w Bełżcu.jpg|thumb|Deportation of Jews to Bełżec from [[Zamość]], April 1942]]

In the territory of the so-called [[Lublin Reservation|Nisko "reservation"]], the city of Lublin became the hub of the early Nazi transfer of about 95,000 German, Austrian, and Polish Jews expelled from the West and the General Government area.<ref name="Encyclopedia">{{cite book |author=Robert Rozett |author2=Shmuel Spector |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J5EuAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA47 |title=Encyclopedia of the Holocaust |publisher=Routledge |page=47 |isbn=978-1135969509 |year=2013}}</ref> The prisoners were put to work by the ''[[Schutzstaffel]]'' (SS) in the construction of anti-tank ditches (''Burggraben'') along the [[Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact|transitory Nazi-Soviet border]].<ref name=Schwindt52>{{cite book |first=Barbara |last=Schwindt |title=Das Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslager Majdanek: Funktionswandel im Kontext der "Endlösung" |publisher=Königshausen & Neumann |year=2005 |page=52 |isbn=978-3826031236}}</ref> The ''Burggraben'' project was abandoned with the onset of [[Operation Barbarossa]].<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/><ref name="Browning-1995">{{cite book |author-link=Christopher R. Browning |first=Christopher R. |last=Browning |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=L1O2ZvS29DYC&pg=PA6 |title=The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1995 |isbn=0521558786}}</ref> On 13 October 1941, [[Heinrich Himmler]] gave the [[SS]]-and-Police Leader of Lublin, ''SS [[Brigadeführer]]'' [[Odilo Globočnik]] an order to start [[Germanization|Germanizing]] the area around [[Zamość]],<ref name="M/MPwB"/> which entailed the removal of Jews from the areas of future settlement.{{sfn|Musiał|2000|pp=192–194}}

===Camp construction===
{{main|The Holocaust in Poland}}
The decision to begin work on the first stationary [[Gas chamber#Germany|gas chambers]] in the [[General Government]] preceded the actual [[Wannsee Conference]] by three months.<ref name="M/MPwB"/> The first steps were taken between mid-September and mid-October 1941,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Browning |first=Christopher R. |year=1994|title=The Nazi Decision to Commit Mass Murder: Three Interpretations: The Euphoria of Victory and the Final Solution: Summer-Fall 1941|journal=German Studies Review |volume=17 |issue=3 |pages=477 |doi=10.2307/1431894 |issn=0149-7952 |jstor=1431894}}</ref> and the construction began around 1 November.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=je27CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA74 |title=The Extermination of the European Jews|last=Gerlach|first=Christian|date= 2016|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0521880787 |page=74 |language=en}}</ref> The site near Bełżec was chosen for several reasons: it was situated on the border between the [[Lublin]] District and the German [[District of Galicia]] formed after Operation Barbarossa. It could "process" the Jews of both regions.<ref name="M/MPwB"/> The ease of transportation was secured by the railroad junction at nearby [[Rava-Ruska|Rawa-Ruska]] and the highway between Lublin-Stadt and Lemberg.<ref name="MMPwB-Reinhardt"/> The northern boundary of the planned killing centre consisted of an anti-tank trench constructed a year earlier. The ditch, excavated originally for military purposes was likely to serve as the first mass grave. Globocnik brought in ''[[Obersturmführer]]'' [[Richard Thomalla]] who was a civil engineer by profession and the camp construction expert in the SS. Work had commenced in early November 1941, using local builders overseen by a squad of [[Trawniki men|Trawniki guards]]. The installation, resembling a railway transit point for the purpose of forced labour, was finished before Christmas. It featured insulated barracks for showering among several other structures. Some local men were released. The SS completed the work in February 1942 by fitting in the tank engine and the exhaust piping systems for gassing. The trial killings were performed in early March.<ref name="JVL">{{cite web | url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/reinhard.html | title=The "Final Solution": Operation Reinhard – The Camps of Belzec, Sobibor & Treblinka - The Construction of the Belzec Extermination Camp | publisher=Jewish Virtual Library | year=2015 | orig-year=1984 | access-date=25 April 2015 | translator-last=McVay | translator-first=Kenneth }}</ref><ref name="ARC-Reinhard"/>

The "Final Solution" was formulated at the [[Wannsee Conference]] in late January 1942 by the leading proponents of gassing (who were unaware of Bełżec's existence),<ref name=Bergen178/> including Wilhelm Dolpheid, Ludwig Losacker, Helmut Tanzmann and Governor [[Otto Wächter]].<ref name="ARC-Reinhard"/> Dolpheid negotiated with the ''SS-Oberführer'' [[Viktor Brack]] in Berlin for the use of the [[Aktion T4]] personnel in the process.<ref name="ARC-Reinhard">{{cite web |url=http://www.deathcamps.org/reinhard/finalsolution.html |title=Aktion Reinhard and the Emergence of 'The Final Solution' |publisher=Deathcamps.org |year=2014 |access-date=4 March 2014}}</ref> Only two months later, on 17 March 1942, the daily gassing operations at Bełżec extermination camp began with the T4 leadership brought in from Germany under the guise of [[Organisation Todt]] (OT).<ref name="M/MPwB"/><ref name="annefrank.dk">{{cite web |url=http://www.annefrank.dk/kurtgerstein/report.htm |title=The Gerstein Report (''Der Gerstein-Bericht im NS-Archiv'') |publisher=Annefrank.dk |date=26 May 1945 |access-date=4 March 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140203235034/http://www.annefrank.dk/kurtgerstein/report.htm |archive-date=3 February 2014 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

===Experience in the Aktion T4 euthanasia program===

The three commandants of the camp including ''[[Kriminalpolizei]]'' officers ''[[SS-Sturmbannführer]]'' [[Christian Wirth]] and ''[[SS-Hauptsturmführer]]'' [[Gottlieb Hering]], had been involved in the [[Aktion T4|forced euthanasia program]] since 1940 in common with almost all of their German staff thereafter.<ref name="ARC-Reinhard"/> Wirth had the leading position as the supervisor of six extermination hospitals in the Reich; Hering was the non-medical chief of the [[Sonnenstein Castle|Sonnenstein gassing facility]] in Saxony as well as at the [[Hadamar Euthanasia Centre]].<ref name="ARC-Reinhard"/> Christian Wirth had been a killing expert from the beginning as participant of the first T-4 gassing of handicapped people at the [[Brandenburg Euthanasia Centre]]. He was, therefore, an obvious choice to be the first commandant of the first stationary [[extermination camp]] of [[Operation Reinhard]] in the [[General Government]]. It was his proposal to use the exhaust gas emitted by the internal-combustion engine of a motorcar as the killing agent instead of the bottled [[carbon monoxide]], because no delivery from outside the camp would be required as in the case of the T-4 method. However, Wirth decided that the comparable technology of mobile [[Nazi gas van|gas van]]s used at [[Chełmno extermination camp]] before December 1941 (and by the ''[[Einsatzgruppen]]'' in the East),{{sfn|Klee|Dressen|Riess|1991|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=ACWKeRF49UYC&pg=PA69 "Chapter 3. A new and better method of killing had to be found. The gas-vans"]. p. 69}} had proven insufficient for the projected number of victims from the [[Holocaust trains]] arriving at the new railway approach ramp.<ref name="Fischel46">{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HrW-b3Q-3ewC&pg=PA46 |author=Jack Fischel |title=The Holocaust |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |isbn=978-0313298790 |pages=46–47, 175 |year=1998 }}</ref>

Wirth developed his method on the basis of experience he had gained in the fixed gas chambers of Aktion T4. Even though [[Zyklon B]] became broadly available later on, Wirth decided against it. Zyklon B was produced by a private firm for both Birkenau, and Majdanek nearby, but their infrastructure differed. Bełżec was an [[Operation Reinhard]] camp meant to circumvent the problems of supply, and instead, rely on a system of extermination based on ordinary and readily available killing agents. For economic and practical reasons, Wirth had almost the same carbon monoxide gas used in T-4, generated with the torque of a large engine. Although Holocaust witnesses' testimonies differ as to the type of fuel, [[Erich Fuchs]]' postwar affidavit indicates that most probably it was a petrol engine with a system of pipes delivering exhaust fumes into the gas chambers.{{sfn|Klee|Dressen|Riess|1991|pp=230–237, 241, 296}} For very small transports of Jews and Gypsies over a short distance, a minimised version of the gas van technology was also used in Bełżec. The T-4 participant and first operator of the gas chambers, SS-''[[Hauptscharführer]]'' [[Lorenz Hackenholt]],<ref name="Tregenza2000">Michael Tregenza (2000), [https://archive.today/20080302211812/http://www.mazal.org/archive/documents/Tregenza/Tregenza01.htm "The 'Disappearance' of SS-Hauptscharfuhrer Lorenz Hackenholt."] A Report on the 1959–63 West German Police Search for Lorenz Hackenholt, the Gas Chamber Expert of the Aktion Reinhard Extermination Camps. Mazel on-line library. [[Internet Archive]].</ref> rebuilt an [[Opel Blitz]] post-office vehicle with the help of a local craftsman into a small gas van.{{sfn|Klee|Dressen|Riess|1991|pp=230–237, 241, 296}} The killing process, using the lethal carbon monoxide, often failed to be completed quickly, inflicting horrific suffering on the victims as they suffocated to death. The guards jokingly referred to the killing site as the Hackenholt Foundation.<ref name=HC-1942>{{cite book|editor1-first=Marilyn|editor1-last=Harran|date=2000 |title= The Holocaust Chronicle |publisher=Publications International|chapter=1942: The Final Solution|page=308|isbn= 978-0785329633 |edition= |url=http://www.holocaustchronicle.org/StaticPages/293.html }}</ref>

===Concealment of camp's purpose===
[[File:Belzec extermination camp sign.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|Polish-language sign. Reads: "Attention! All belongings must be handed in at the counter except for money, documents and other valuables, which you must keep with you. Shoes should be tied together in pairs and placed in the area marked for shoes. Afterward, one must go completely naked to the showers."]]

Bełżec "processing" zone consisted of two sections surrounded by a high [[barbed wire]] fence camouflaged with cut [[fir]] branches: Camp 1, which included the victims' unloading area with two undressing barracks further up; as well as Camp 2, which contained the gas chambers and the mass graves dug by the [[crawler excavator]].<ref name="Collections">{{cite AV media |author=USHMM |year=2015 |title=Testimony of Bronisław Ragan |publisher=[[USHMM]] Collections |url=http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn507888 |access-date=29 April 2015 }} See also: [http://www.deathcamps.org/belzec/pic/bmap10.jpg sketch by Jan Krupa and Bronisław Ragan] made at the request of the Bełżec Mayor, circa 1971.</ref> The two zones were completely screened from each other and connected only by a narrow corridor called ''der Schlauch'', or "the Tube".<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/> All arriving Jews disembarked from the trains at a platform in the reception zone. They were met by ''SS-Scharführer'' Fritz Jirmann (Irmann) standing at the podium with a loudspeaker,<ref name="Collections"/> and were told by the ''[[Sonderkommando]]'' men that they had arrived at a transit camp.<ref name="Reder"/> To ready themselves for the communal shower, women and children were separated from men.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/> The disrobed new arrivals were forced to run along a fenced-off path to the gas chambers, leaving them no time to absorb where they were. The process was conducted as quickly as possible amid constant screaming by the Germans.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/> At times, a handful of Jews were selected at the ramp to perform all the manual work involved with extermination.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/>

The wooden gas chambers—which were built with double walls that were insulated by earth packed between them—were disguised as the shower barracks, so that the victims would not realise the true purpose of the facility. The gassing itself, which took about 30 minutes, was conducted by Hackenholt with the Ukrainian guards and a Jewish aide.<ref name="Klee_238"/> Removing the bodies from the gas chambers, burying them, sorting and repairing the victims' clothing for shipping was performed by ''Sonderkommando'' work-details.<ref name="Klee_238">{{harvnb|Klee|Dressen|Riess|1991|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=ACWKeRF49UYC&pg=PA238 "Chapter 4. The camp had clean sanitary facilities" pp. 238–244]}}</ref> The workshops for the Jewish prisoners and the barracks for the Ukrainian guards were separated from the "processing" zone behind an embankment of the old Otto Line with the barbed wire on top.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/> Most Jews from the corpse-unit (the ''Totenjuden'') were murdered periodically and replaced by new arrivals, so that they would neither organise a revolt nor survive to tell about the camp's purpose.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/> The German SS and the administration were housed in two cottages outside the camp.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/>