- Mass killing
- March–December 1942
- Documented arrivals
- 434,508
- Method
- Carbon-monoxide gas
- Survivor witnesses
- Rudolf Reder, Chaim Hirszman
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Creation and role
Construction began in November 1941 beside the Lublin–Lwów railway. Bełżec became the first of the three principal Operation Reinhard killing centers and a prototype for Sobibór and Treblinka. Christian Wirth established its killing procedures under Odilo Globocnik’s authority.
Deportations and killing
Mass killing began on March 17, 1942. Victims arrived primarily from the Lublin, Galicia and Kraków districts. They were told the site was a transit or delousing facility, forced to surrender belongings and undress, and driven into gas chambers supplied with carbon monoxide from an engine.
Jewish forced labor
A small number of Jews were selected from transports to sort stolen property, cut hair, remove bodies, extract gold teeth and bury victims. These labor detachments were periodically murdered and replaced, one reason Bełżec left so few survivor witnesses.
Exhumation and concealment
From late 1942, prisoners were forced to exhume and burn bodies on open-air grids made from railway rails. Buildings were dismantled, the terrain leveled and vegetation planted. This evidence-destruction work belonged to the same broader logic later formalized through Aktion 1005.
Numbers and evidence
The Höfle Telegram records 434,508 arrivals at Bełżec through December 31, 1942. Current United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates place the number of Jews murdered at the killing center at approximately 434,500. Higher postwar estimates, including 600,000, are no longer generally used.
Survivors, investigation, and memorial
Rudolf Reder escaped in November 1942 and later published a detailed memoir. Chaim Hirszman escaped from the final labor-prisoner transport. Postwar Polish investigations, German trials and archaeology in the 1990s mapped mass graves and structural evidence. The present museum and memorial opened in 2004.
Sources
This page is based on institutional and scholarly sources. Media credit links point to the original source page.