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Bełżec
Belzec (English: or , Polish: , approximately ) was a Nazi German extermination camp in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), occupied Poland. It was built by the SS for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to murder all History of Jews in Poland, Polish Jews, a major part of the "Final Solution", the overall Nazi effort to complete the genocide of all European Jews. Before Germany's defeat put an end to this project more than six million Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust. The camp operated from to the end of . It was situated about south of the local railroad station of Bełżec, Lublin Voivodeship, Bełżec, in the new Lublin District of the General Government territory of Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), German-occupied Poland. The burning of exhumed corpses on five pyre, open-air grids and bone crushing continued until March 1943. Between 430,000 and 500,000 Jews are believed to have been murdered by the SS at Bełżec. It was th ...
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Operation Reinhard
Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt ( or ; also or ) was the codename of the secret Nazi Germany, German plan in World War II to exterminate History of the Jews in Poland, Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied Poland. This deadliest phase of the Holocaust was marked by the introduction of extermination camps. The operation proceeded from March 1942 to November 1943; about 1.47 million or more Jews were murdered in just 100 days from late July to early November 1942, a rate which is approximately 83% higher than the commonly suggested figure for the kill rate in the Rwandan genocide. In the time frame of July to October 1942, the overall death toll, including all killings of Jews and not just Operation Reinhard, amounted to two million killed in those four months alone. It was the single fastest rate of genocidal killing in history. During the operation, as many as two million Jews were sent to Bełżec extermination camp, Bełżec ...
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Extermination Camp
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe, primarily in occupied Poland, during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The victims of death camps were primarily murdered by gassing, either in permanent installations constructed for this specific purpose, or by means of gas vans. The six extermination camps were Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Extermination through labour was also used at the Auschwitz and Majdanek death camps. Millions were also murdered in concentration camps, in the Aktion T4, or directly on site. Additionally, camps operated by Nazi allies have also been described as extermination or death camps, most notably the Jasenovac concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia. The National Socialists made no secret of the existence of concentration camps as early as 1933, as they serv ...
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Gottlieb Hering
__NOTOC__ Gottlieb Hering (2 June 1887 – 9 October 1945) was an SS commander of Nazi Germany. He served in Action T4 and later as the second and last commandant of Bełżec extermination camp during Operation Reinhard. Hering directly perpetrated the genocide of Jews and other peoples during The Holocaust. Early life Hering was born and raised in Warmbronn, a district in the town of Leonberg. After finishing his schooling, Hering worked on a farm near his home. From 1907 to 1909, he served in the 20th (2nd Württemberg) Uhlans "King William I" regiment, and then voluntarily stayed on for another three years. Hering then joined the Heilbronn police in 1912. In 1914, Hering married and had one son. During the First World War, Hering was called to serve in the machine gun company of Grenadier Regiment 123 in 1915, with which he fought on the Western Front in northern France until the armistice in 1918. He attained the rank of sergeant. For his war services he was awarded th ...
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Rudolf Reder
Rudolf Reder a.k.a. Roman Robak (April 4, 1881 – October 6, 1977) was one of only two survivors of the Bełżec extermination camp. His testimony after the war became very well known. He submitted a deposition to the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in January 1946 in Kraków. In terms of the number of Polish Jews who perished in its gas chambers, Bełżec had the third highest death toll among the six Nazi death camps located in occupied Poland, estimated between 500,000 and 600,000 men, women and children. Only Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka killed more people during the Holocaust.''Poland's holocaust'' By Tadeusz Piotrowski. Page 131.
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The postwar testimony of Reder was of special ...
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Treblinka Extermination Camp
Treblinka () was the second-deadliest extermination camp to be built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp operated between 23 July 1942 and 19 October 1943 as part of Operation Reinhard, the deadliest phase of the Final Solution. During this time, it is estimated that between 700,000 and 900,000 Jews were murdered in its gas chambers, along with 2,000 Romani people. More Jews were murdered at Treblinka than at any other Nazi extermination camp apart from Auschwitz-Birkenau. Managed by the German SS with assistance from Trawniki guards – recruited from among Soviet POWs to serve with the Germans – the camp consisted of two separate units. Treblinka I was a forced-labour camp ('' Arbeitslager'') whose prisoners worked in the gravel pit or irrigation area and in the forest, where they cut wood to fuel the crema ...
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Final Solution
The Final Solution or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was a plan orchestrated by Nazi Germany during World War II for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews. The "Final Solution to the Jewish question" was the official code name for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not restricted to the European continent. This policy of deliberate and systematic genocide starting across German-occupied Europe was formulated in procedural and geopolitical terms by Nazi leadership in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference held near Berlin, and culminated in the Holocaust, which saw the murder of 90% of Polish Jews, and two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe. The nature and timing of the decisions that led to the Final Solution is an intensely researched and debated aspect of the Holocaust. The program evolved during the first 25 months of war leading to the attempt at "murdering every last Jew in the German grasp". Christopher Browning, a histori ...
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Lorenz Hackenholt
Lorenz Hackenholt (26 June 1914 missing 1945, declared legally dead as of 31 December 1945, but believed to have still been alive) was a member of the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) with the rank of ''Hauptscharführer'' (First Sergeant). During World War II Hackenholt built and operated the gas chamber at the Bełżec extermination camp in occupied Poland during Operation Reinhard. In so doing, he personally carried out the murder of hundreds of thousands of people. Hackenholt had earlier been part of the murder of mental patients and the disabled in Action T4 programme of forced euthanasia.Klee (2003), ''The Good Old Days'', pp. 230, 237, 241, 294. Life Hackenholt's full name was Laurenzius Marie Hackenholt. He was born on 26 June 1914 in Gelsenkirchen/Ruhr. His father was Theodor Hackenholt and his mother was Elizabeth Wobriezek. He attended the local elementary school until he reached the age of 14. He then became an apprentice bricklayer. After he passed the trade examination, ...
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Christian Wirth
Christian Wirth (; 24 November 1885 – 26 May 1944) was a German ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) officer and leading Holocaust perpetrator who was one of the primary architects of the program to exterminate the Jewish people of Poland, known as Operation Reinhard. His nicknames included Christian the Cruel (), Stuka, and The Wild Christian due to the extremity of his behaviour among the SS and Trawniki guards and to the camp inmates and victims. Wirth worked within the Action T4 program, in which people with disabilities were murdered by gassing or lethal injection, and then at implementing Operation Reinhard, by developing almost single-handed, the extermination camps for the purpose of mass murder. Wirth later served as Inspector of all the Reinhard Camps. He was killed by the Yugoslav Partisans in Hrpelje-Kozina near Trieste after the conclusion of Operation Reinhard. Early life Christian Wirth was born on 24 November 1885 in Oberbalzheim, Württemberg, part of the German Emp ...
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Richard Thomalla
Richard Thomalla (; 23 October 1903 – 12 May 1945) was a German war criminal and SS commander of Nazi Germany. A civil engineer by profession, he was head of the SS Central Building Administration at Lublin reservation in occupied Poland. Thomalla was in charge of construction for the Operation Reinhard death camps Bełżec extermination camp, Bełżec, Sobibor extermination camp, Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camp, Treblinka during the Holocaust in Poland. Operation Reinhardt Born in Sowin, Opole Voivodeship, Annahof in the former Upper Silesia region of the German Empire (now, the village of Sowin, Opole Voivodeship, Poland). Thomalla became a member of the Nazi Party in 1932: (no. 1,238,872) and ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS no. 41,206). The first death camp to be constructed under Thomalla's supervision was Bełżec extermination camp, Bełżec. Construction started on 1 November 1941 and was completed in March 1942. He then proceeded to design and supervise the construction ...
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David Silberklang
''Gates of Tears: the Holocaust in the Lublin District'' is the first comprehensive study of the Holocaust in the Lublin District of Poland. It was written by David Silberklang and published in 2013 by Yad Vashem. __NOTOC__ Author David Silberklang is an American-born Israeli historian, who is currently the Senior Historian of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem and the lead editor of '' Yad Vashem Studies''. His 2003 doctoral dissertation at the Hebrew University was titled ''The Holocaust in the Lublin District''. Title The title comes from an October 1942 letter written by Rabbi Zvi Elimelech Talmud in the Majdan Tatarski Ghetto, which stated in part: Only the gates of tears have not been locked before us, and we are able and entitled to bemoan the destruction of our nation, to eulogize the rupture in our destroyed people, and to lead the river of our tears with us to the grave. This they cannot take from us. And He who sits on high in heaven h ...
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Auschwitz
Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (''Stammlager'') in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers, Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labour camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben, and dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis' Final Solution to the Jewish question. After Germany initiated World War II by invading Poland in September 1939, the '' Schutzstaffel'' (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp. The initial transport of political detainees to Auschwitz consisted almost solely of Poles (for whom the camp was initially established). For the first two years, the majority of inmates were Polish. In May 1940, German criminals brought to the ...
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