First Report from 17 July 1942 -
Description of the Camp.
Belzec.
The camp represented itself the form of a wheel, surrounded by barbed wire; guards inside
and outside - Ukrainians are placed densely. The trains from the station go to a siding, enclosed by
barbed wire. There the Polish railway workers are replaced by Germans. The German engine driver drives the
train to the disembarkation point which is between two barracks: on the right for the men and on the left for
the women. There the Jews have to remove their clothes. Then "to the bath", which is in the third
barrack. There the extermination is carried out, probably by an electrical floor. Afterwards, the corpses
are carried by trolleys to a trench behind the fence, which is 30 metres deep. This trench was dug by the
Jews, and all of them were subsequently liquidated.. The Ukrainian guards are lavishly provided with money
and stolen valuables. For a litre of vodka they pay 400 zlotys, for a sexual contact with a girl 2,000 zlotys,
jewelry or diamonds. Of course all witnesses of the crime will be killed in future.
Second Report from the end of July 1942.
The death camps. The main camps in the
Generalgouvernement are Belzec and
Sobibor in
Wlodawa county.
The camp in Belzec was not active in the last decade of May because of the horrible stench from the decaying bodies
of thausands of murdered people.
Since
3 June the camp is active again. Every day two transports arrive: One at 6 a.m.
and the second at 4 p.m.. Immediately the hangmen organize the "disinfection and bath", from which nobody is
coming back alive.
On
13 June a revolt happend in the camp when the Jewish
Sonderkommando, who was
ordered to remove the
bodies of the murdered women and children, saw the horrible scenery of upright standing gassed victims in the
gas chambers, embracing themselves in death. The
Sonderkommando attacked the guards who then alarmed the
whole camp's staff. 4-6 Germans were killed, and almost all Jews.
Nearly everywhere in the
Generalgouvernement massacres against Jews happened. In
mid-June around 4,000 people
were deported from
Krakow. There more than 150 people were shot on the spot. In
Tarnow 400, in
Nowy Sacz 500,
in
Lukow 50 (on
20 and 21 July),
in
Szczebrzeszyn more than 70, in
Bilgoraj
60, in
Tarnogrod 48 etc.
These are fragmentary numbers, given as example for the last weeks.
Source: Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw
© ARC 2005
