SS-Sonderkommando Belzec

Group of men wearing German SS uniforms standing in front of a white building.

Forced Labour Camp

Before World War II, Bełżec was a small settlement inhabited mostly by Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews, and located in the Rawa Ruska county, Lwów voivodeship. After the conflict’s outbreak, it fell under the German occupation and at the border zone between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. In May 1940, the Germans established a forced labour camp in Bełżec and its aim was to build border fortifications. Across the next several months, over 11,000 prisoners were detained there, mostly Sinti, Polish Roma, Jews, and Polish peasants. SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Dolp was the camp commandant.

Several dozen people working with shovels inside a long trench.
Fortification works at the German-Soviet border, 1940.

Following the German invasion on the Soviet Union in June 1941, Bełżec found itself on the three districts of the General Government – Lublin, Kraków, Galicia – which were inhabited by approximately 1,000,000 Jews. Its location near the railway line connecting Warsaw with Lviv as well as the nearby junction station in Rawa Ruska made it a convenient area for creating the first extermination camp of operation “Reinhardt”. It was most probably suggested to the commander of the SS and police forces in the Lublin district, Odilo Globocnik, by the former garrison of the forced labour camp. The first group of SS-men arrived in Bełżec in late October 1941.

Aerial photograph, former camp area of a square-like shape and bright colour, surrounded by greenery.
1944 aerial photograph of the former camp grounds.

Construction of SS-Sonderkommando Belzec

Construction of the extermination camp began on 1 November 1941, and ended most probably at the turn of February and March 1942. The facility covered a rectangular-like area of around 7 hectares. It was enclosed with double barbed wire fences with a row of pine trees planted between them. Branches were also interwoven with the barbed wire for additional camouflage. Sentry towers were placed in its every corner, and an additional one in the central, elevated spot inside the camp.

Black, long nails placed on a white background.
Nails unearthed during archaeological excavations conducted on the former camp grounds.

The first group of construction workers comprised around 20 men from Bełżec and other nearby settlements. Completely unaware of their future purpose, they erected the first three camp structures. The watchmen from Trawniki (where their training facility was located) also participated in the construction works. On 23 December 1941, those labourers were replaced with at least 120 Jews arrested in the nearby town of Lubycza Królewska. They accomplished the remaining works and then they were murdered in February or early March during the test runs of the gas chambers.

The death camp in Bełżec was the first Holocaust killing centre, where stationary gas chambers were build and applied. Initially, the victims were murdered with pressurised carbon dioxide from metal tanks, but that method was quickly replaced with exhaust fumes generated by an engine from a Soviet tank.

A heavily corroded, T-shaped metal fragment of a structure, found on the site of a former German extermination camp. The artefact consists of a vertical pipe with a wide flange at the bottom and a transverse head with numerous small holes at the ends, resembling a sieve. The object is covered with a thick layer of rust and pitting, and a crack is visible in the upper part of the shaft.
A piece of gas chamber equipment found on the former camp grounds, which used to emit exhaust fumes used in the killing process.

Camp Topography

SS-Sonderkommando Belzec was divided into two zones. The lower camp (Lager I) was the transport reception area, where deportees undressed and women had their hair cut and shaved. The upper camp (Lager II) was the extermination part. Both zones were separated with a dense fencing of pine trees that concealed the mass murder. A specially demarked and enclosed path named “the sluice” (Ger. die Schleuse) led to the gas chambers.

Plan of the death camp in Bełżec with rows of rectangular barracks, trees, and large empty squares marked as yards.
Plan of the death camp in Bełżec drawn by Józef Bau and included in the memoir of the Holocaust survivor Rudolf Reder published in 1946.

Initially, only three wooden barracks were erected in the camp: an undressing barracks, a barbers’ barracks, and a gas chamber. Over time, more structures were built to accommodate some Jewish prisoners as well as to house a laundry, sewing workshops, and quarters for the sentry guards.

The diorama/model is a reconstruction of the first buildings at the Bełżec extermination camp. The photograph is in sepia tones. The camp buildings visible here include: railway tracks, the unloading ramp, the building housing the gas chambers, the barbers' workshop and the undressing room. The diorama captures the layout and appearance of the camp’s first buildings.
Model representing the first structures erected on the grounds of the extermination camp in Bełżec.

During the first stage of the camp’s operation, i.e. in the spring of 1942, between eight and ten train cars with deportees could be brought directly onto its grounds. At the turn of June and July 1942, the Germans remodelled the camp: expanded the railway ramp, which allowed for bringing in twenty train cars at a time; and erected a new, concrete gas chamber building with six rooms used in killing. For some time, a narrow gauge railway line functioned in the camp, which was used to transport bodies from the gas chambers to the mass graves.

The camp commandant headquarters, SS garrison barracks, and warehouses for all possessions looted from the victims were located in the converted former railway buildings.

A metal narrow gauge railway tie, positioned vertically against a light, uniform background. The object takes the form of a heavy, rectangular plate made of dark, rough cast iron or steel, showing visible signs of corrosion and pitting. On the side edge there is a white inventory marking: ‘PMM-B-2’. The tie’s design features characteristic grooves and mounting holes: on the left-hand side there is one larger, oval hole, whilst on the right-hand side there are two smaller, rectangular cut-outs.
Narrow gauge railway tie found on the former camp grounds during archaeological excavations.

SS Garrison

The garrison comprised at least 37 SS-men, including 35 Germans and 2 Austrians with between 15 and 20 stationed in the camp at a time. Christian Wirth was the first camp commandant and was responsible for designing and improving the mechanisms of the facility’s functioning. On 1 August 1942, he was replaced with Gottlieb Hering, who held that position until the final camp liquidation. Before World War II, both commandants served in police and participated in the “T4” forced euthanasia programme targeting the disabled people.

Black and white portrait photograph of a men wearing glasses and a German SS uniform.
Gottlieb Hering

The auxiliary garrison members comprised the watchmen recruited from among the Soviet POWs, mostly of Ukrainian origin. Among them, there were also some Volksdeutche (“ethnic Germans”), Russians and people of other nationalities coming from the territories of the Soviet Union.

Seven men wearing military uniforms, one of them is holding a mandolin; a small, wooden hut is visible in the background.
Watchmen at the entrance gate of the extermination camp in Bełżec.

Transports

The first transports with victims deported to the death camp in Bełżec arrived on 17 March 1942 – from the ghetto in Lublin in the morning, and from Lviv in the afternoon. From that day numerous railway transports were sent there with varying intensity until mid-December 1942. Their peak came in the summer of 1942, in the aftermath of an decree given by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, who ordered the ghetto liquidation operations in the General Government to be accomplished by the end of 1942.

Two phases of deportations can be indicated throughout the camp’s functioning. One, between March and June, and the other between July and December 1942. Between them there was an around three-week-long period when the camp ceased transport reception, and when new, larger gas chamber building was erected. A total of 179 transports were directed to Bełżec: 59 in phase one, 120 during phase two.

Transport reception usually took place during the day. The trains that arrived in the late afternoon or during the night, stopped at the tracks, and the victims locked inside the cars were waiting under guard until the morning.

A sepia-toned photograph, a portrait of a family of eleven; in the front row, centre, an elderly man in a suit, next to him two dark-haired women dressed in black with pearl necklaces, between them children (a girl and two boys); in the back row, three men and two women – one elderly woman dressed in black, a younger woman smiling, dressed in white.
The Frim family, Przemyśl 1934. Standing from the left: Artur, Józefina, Adolf, Dora, Leon; below Eleonora, Henryk, Karol; sitting from the left: Fryderyka, Solomon, Lola. Józefina, Adolf, Dora, Karol and Solomon did not survive the Holocaust.

Prisoners

All manual works within the camp grounds were performed by Jews selected from among the newcomers. Initially, no regular labour groups were organised, and the prisoners were murdered immediately after accomplishing their assigned tasks. Over time, however, by initiative of the first camp commandant, permanent kommandos were formed.

The prisoners were involved in activities related to processing incoming transports – reception of deportees, sorting the plundered property, cutting girls’ and women’s hair, and removing golden teeth from the bodies. They were also forced to remove corpses from the gas chambers and burying them in mass graves. Another task involved the maintenance works on the camouflaging fence by replacing the pine trees planted among the barbed wires.

A group of five people (two women, three men) dressed in civilian clothes, with a light-coloured armband visible on their left arms; in the background, rows of wooden barracks.
Prisoners in front of the barracks of the extermination camp in Bełżec

Extermination Mechanisms

The entire organisation of the camp in Bełżec was organised in such a way so as to maximise the mass extermination efficiency. The perpetrators wanted to unload and process the incoming transports in accordance with the procedure developed by Christian Wirth.

A black-and-white portrait of an elderly man wearing glasses and a German uniform.
Christian Wirth

The extermination process took between two and three hours – from the arrival of freight cars on the unloading ramp to the burial of bodies in mass graves.

Not all the victims were murdered in the gas chambers. Small children, the wounded or disabled, and those who tried to mount resistance were instead taken to the area nicknamed “Lazaret” by the SS garrison, and there they were shot.

A rectangular building, a wooden fence in front of the entrance, the inscription: ‘Bade und Inhalation’ and the Star of David symbol; the roof is partially exposed, revealing rectangular rooms, with leafless trees all around.
Gas chamber model presented at the exhibition of the Museum and Memorial in Bełżec

Burning Victims’ Bodies

For the first several maps of the camp’s operation, bodies were buried in mass graves. However, their decomposition occurred very rapidly and no measures aiming at slowing it down were successful. Eventually, incineration grates made of railway parts were introduced. Between three and five stakes were burning continuously 24 hours a day from the autumn of 1942 and to the spring of 1943.

A colourful scene, with five actively burning pyres at the centre, opposite mounds of piled-up ashes; in the foreground, colourful wooden huts; to the left, a tall conifer hedge, with long railway tracks in front of it.
Painting created in the 1960s by Wacław Kołodziejczyk, a resident of the Bełżec settlement, depicting the burning of bodies during the camp liquidation

Victims

At least 434,508 people were murdered at the extermination camp in Bełżec. Most victims were the Polish Jews deported from three districts of the General Government: Lublin, Kraków, and Galicia. Others included the foreign Jews deported to occupied Poland from the Third Reich, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia. Most deportees were murdered directly upon their arrival at the camp. They were not registered anywhere as no transport lists or prisoner records were ever compiled. Besides Jews a certain small number of Roma and Poles were also murdered in Bełżec.

A portrait of a multi-generational family, with a middle-aged man and woman in the front row; the woman is dressed in white.
Fela Pleszowska with her family gathered on her wedding day. The photograph was taken before World War II in Kraków. Fela was deported to Bełżec in 1942.

The End of the Camp Operations

Around the mid-December 1942, the SS garrison ceased receiving further transports and began liquidating the camp infrastructure. By June 1943, all buildings and equipment were destroyed, the grounds were ploughed over, and trees were planted to conceal the crime scene. The last prisoners of SS-Sonderkommando Belzec were deported to the death camp in Sobibór on 26 June 1943. They mounted resistance upon arrival on the railway ramp and they were all murdered.

A stone with a black plaque attached to it bearing the inscription: In memory of the Jewish Sonderkommando prisoners from the Bełżec extermination camp, murdered on the ramp at the Sobibór camp in June 1943. Bełżec Museum and Memorial. An English translation of the inscription appears below. To the left, a white candle; a small white stone placed on the stone.
Remembrance Sone dedicated to the prisoners of the death camp in Bełżec that were murdered in Sobibór.

Survivors

According to the German assumptions, all people deported to the death camp in Bełżec were meant to be murdered. Only some prisoners had their lives temporarily prolonged, as they were selected for work in various labour groups. A few people managed to escape, but only two former prisoner survived until the end of World War II and left written accounts – Rudolf Reder (1881–1977) and Chaim Hirszman (1912–1946). Reder was deported to Bełżec from Lviv during the so-called Grossaktion in August, while Hirszman was deported with his wife and their 1.5-year-old son in November 1942 from Zaklików. Reder managed to escape in late November 1942, when under the escort of several watchmen he was taken to Lviv to collect metal sheets for the camp. Hirszman escaped from the train carrying the last prisoners to Sobibór in June 1943.

On the left is a portrait of Chaim Hirszman as a young man. He has dark, slightly curly hair and hazel eyes. He is wearing a dark suit and tie. He is looking straight at the camera. On the right is a portrait of Rudolf Reder as an elderly man. He has grey hair, a moustache and almond-shaped eyes. He is wearing a dark suit and tie. A handkerchief can be seen in his jacket pocket.
Chaim Hirszman and Rudolf Reder