Belzec
Belzec death camp
Belzec was first a labor camp where Jews deported from Lublin District and other parts of the Generalgouvernement were forced to work by SS men. They built fortifications and anitank ditches along the bug river. The camp was dismantled at the end of 1940, only to be made into a extermination camp in 1941 by SS officials and police authorities. It finished construction in the late winter of 1942 and was the second german extermination center to be made. It was the first of the Operation Reinhard killing centers to start. Operation Reinhard was the plan created by SS men and Police Leader in Lublin to murder all the jews in the Generalgouvernment.
Trains of 40 to 60 freight cars with 80 to 100 people in a car would arrive at the railway station. 20 cars would be brought into the camp at once and were told by the officials that they had arrived at a transit camp and were to hand over all valuables and men were seperated from women. As more awarness grew of what really happended inside the camps arrivals became more chaotice. When they would not segregate they were forced to undress and run through the "tube" which connected straight to the gas chambers. They would start the engines outside the gas house and carbon minoxide was funneled in.