Bełżec extermination camp

Bełżec (pronounced [ˈbɛu̯ʐɛt͡s], in German: Belzec), was a Nazi extermination camp (a death camp) during the Holocaust. It operated during World War II, from 17 March 1942 to the end of December 1942.^[1]

In those eight months, around 450,000 Jews were murdered at the camp by the Schutzstaffel (SS), the Nazis' paramilitary organization.^[1][2] The SS also killed an unknown number of Christian Poles and Roma people at Bełżec.^[1][3]

Bełżec was the first Nazi camp that used permanent gas chambers to kill prisoners.^[4]

As part of Adolf Hitler's "Final Solution", the Nazis made plans to kill every one of Europe's 11 million Jews.^[5] In 1941 they created the first death camp at Chelmno in Poland. It was a killing center designed to mass-murder Jews.^[4]

Then, in 1942, the Nazis launched Operation Reinhard. This was a plan to kill every Jew in the General Government (a part of German-occupied Poland) - around 2 million people.^[2] The plan called for three more killing centers to be built. Bełżec was the first new death camp the Nazis built.^[6]

The camp was located in the village of Bełżec in German-occupied Poland. It was about 0.5 km (0.31 mi) south of the local railroad station, which made it easy to transport large numbers of deported Jews there.

Only seven Jews who worked as slave laborers in Bełżec's Sonderkommando survived World War II. Just one of them submitted postwar testimony officially.^[7]

Because there are so few witnesses who can testify about the camp's operation, very little is known about Bełżec.^[7]

• Elsa Binder (c. 1920 – c. 1942), a Polish-born Jewish diarist, may have lived and died at Bełżec

• Extermination camps
• Nazi concentration camps
• Nazi Germany
• The Final Solution
• The Holocaust
• Antisemitism

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