The Last Day of Sivan 5703 (June 1943), 80 Years since the Dismantling of the Belzec Death Camp

We have already written on our Hebrew site about the Belzec camp upon the 80th anniversary of its establishment. Approximately 600,000 Jews were killed in the camp and only one person survived (there was another survivor, Chaim Yitzhak Hirshman, may G-d avenge his blood, but he was killed at the end of the war on the day he began to give his testimony about his experiences in the camp).

When the camp was in the process of shutting down, several hundred of the surviving prisoners were forced to work intensively in destroying the evidence and were then taken to Sobibor where they were brutally murdered.

There is not much documentation about the Belzec camp, in the southeast of the Lublin district, near the Lvov-Lublin railway. This is because, as mentioned,there were no survivors of the camp other than Rudolf Reder, who described his experiences in a book.

We will forever remember the hundreds of thousands of our Jewish brothers who perished in this camp by hunger, suffocation, and all other kinds of cruel deaths. We will light a candle for the upliftment of their souls and pray for their eternal rest in Gan Eden (the Garden of Eden), and to mark the eightieth anniversary we present some photos and documents from the place, from the photo archive of Ganzach Kiddush Hashem.

Instructions for entering the “shower”

Translation: Pay attention! Undress completely! Leave everything you brought with you in the designated place, except for money, valuables, documents, and shoes. You must keep the money, valuables, and documents until they are collected in the designated window; Do not take them out of your hands. The shoes must be tied and deposited in their designated place. You must come to the bath completely naked.

Gas chamber in Belzec

A drawing of the Belzec camp made on top of the a photograph of the area – 1944

Jewish prisoners of Belzec performing slave labour

Jewish slave laborers in Belzec