by Yitzhak Arad
These volunteer units were called by a variety of names by the local population—“Ukrainians,” “Trawniki men,” or “Askaries.” The Germans called them Hilfswillige (auxiliaries), or “Hiwis” for short, and the volunteers themselves Wachmänner (guardmen). In Trawniki the “guardmen” received abbreviated military training and exercises, including tactics for the deportation of Jews. One of these guardmen, Engelhand, testified about such tactical training in the village of Trawniki.
The first action against Jews that I participated in took place after my arrival in Trawniki. . . . We were told that this was a tactical exercise. We surrounded the whole village, and were told by the translator that Jews were living there. He told us to go there [in groups of] two men and tell them to get dressed, take with them whatever they can. . . . Soon the car will come and take all of them to Lublin.13
About 2,000 to 3,000 guardmen passed through the training camp of Trawniki during the two and a half years of its activity. Some of them were organized into two battalions with four companies each, about 1,000 men altogether. The size of a company was 100 to 200 men. One of the companies was a training company for squad (Zug) commanders. One or two companies were stationed permanently in the city of Lublin for security duties there. Other units carried out guard duties in institutions, enterprises, and labor camps in the Lublin district. They constituted the main mobile force, which, in addition to the local police units, carried out the deportations from the ghettos and the mass executions of Jews. To each Operation Reinhard death camp—Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka—was allotted a company-size unit, which numbered 90 to 130 men. Most of their squad commanders (Zugwachmänner) were Volksdeutsche from among them who spoke German and Ukrainian. Some of the squad commanders were Ukrainians. SS men from the German staff in the death camps were appointed platoon and company commanders. In spite of their subordination to the death camp commanders and staff, the guardmen kept organizational ties with, and received military supplies, uniforms, and wages from, the Trawniki training camp. Those who were not suitable for service in the death camps, for health or discipline reasons (e.g., drunkards, etc.), were sent back to Trawniki and were replaced by others.14
3
Belzec: Construction
and Experiments
The leaders of Operation Reinhard, who at the end of October 1941 initiated the preparations for the extermination of the Jews in the General Government, did not foresee how many death camps would have to be constructed and operated for this purpose. Up to that time, no death camp operated in Nazi Germany or in the occupied countries and there was therefore no model on which the Operation Reinhard planners could base their plans. However, some guidelines did exist for selecting the sites on which to build the death camps. The camps would have to be near the main concentration of Jews in the General Government and near the railways, to facilitate the transports and deportations. The location of the camps had to be desolate places, as far as possible from inhabited areas, to maintain secrecy and to keep the knowledge of what was transpiring within them from the local population. And, third, the camps had to be in the vicinity of the occupied territories of the Soviet Union so as to encourage the belief that the Jews who had disappeared had eventually reached labor camps in the vast areas of the East.
But no previous experience could be used to determine the optimal extermination technique to be employed or to estimate the annihilation capacity of a gas chamber or a death camp. Such information could be gained only through experimentation. Then, based on early results, decisions regarding the size and structure of each camp and the number of camps required for Operation Reinhard could be made. Belzec was to be the camp where these experiments would be initiated, and additional camps would be planned and constructed according to the results obtained there.
Belzec was a small town in the southeast of the Lublin district, located on the Lublin-Zamosc-Rava Russkaya-Lvov railway line. At the beginning of 1940, the Germans established in Belzec a labor camp for Jews. Thousands of Jews from the Lublin district were sent there as slave-workers to build fortifications on the Soviet-German line of demarcation, which was close to Belzec. This labor camp was liquidated in the autumn of 1940.1
In August 1941, five weeks after the German attack on the Soviet Union, formerly Polish East Galicia, with a population of over half a million Jews, was annexed to the General Government. Consequently, Belzec became the center of a large Jewish population in the General Government—that of the Lublin, Cracow, and Lvov districts. Belzec’s location, as well as the fact that it was on an efficient railway line, would facilitate the transportation of Jews to a camp there.
The exact location selected for the death camp was about half a kilometer from the Belzec railway station, along a railway spur. The area included antitank trenches that had been part of the border fortifications built there in 1940. This was a further advantage, as the trenches could be used as burial pits for the victims.
The construction of the death camp began on November 1, 1941, by the SS Central Building Administration (SS Zentralbauverwaltung) in the Lublin district. SS Oberscharführer Josef Oberhauser, a former euthanasia man, was placed in charge of building the camp. In the second half of December 1941, SS Hauptsturmführer Christian Wirth was appointed commander of Belzec and Oberhauser became his adjutant.2
SS Scharführer Erich Fuchs, who was engaged in the euthanasia institution at Bernburg, testified about Wirth and his arrival to Belzec:
Polizeihauptmann [police captain] Christian Wirth conducted the Aktionen in Bernburg. Subordinate to him were the burners, disinfectors, and drivers. He also supervised the transportation of the mentally ill and of the corpses. One day in the winter of 1941 Wirth arranged a transport [of euthanasia personnel] to Poland. I was picked together with about eight or ten other men and transferred to Belzec. . . . I don’t remember the names of the others. Upon our arrival in Belzec, we met Friedel Schwarz and the other SS men, whose names I cannot remember. They supervised the construction of barracks that would serve as a gas chamber. Wirth told us that in Belzec “all the Jews will be struck down.” For this purpose barracks were built as gas chambers. I installed shower heads in the gas chambers. The nozzles were not connected to any water pipes; they would serve as camouflage for the gas chamber. For the Jews who were gassed it would seem as if they were being taken to baths and for disinfection.3
Before coming to Belzec, Wirth became acquainted with the gas vans in operation in Chelmno and in the eastern occupied territories of the Soviet Union and learned their advantages and disadvantages. This experience in euthanasia, where permanent gas chambers had existed, and with the gas vans inspired his solution. He decided to combine in Belzec the permanent gas chamber with the internal combustion car engine as gas supplier. Wirth objected to the bottles of carbon monoxide gas that had been used in euthanasia institutions. The bottles, which were produced in private factories and which would be supplied to Belzec in large quantities, could arouse suspicion. In addition, the factories were located at great distances from Belzec and the steady supply of the bottles might cause a logistical problem. Wirth preferred to set up a self-contained extermination system, based on an ordinary car engine and easily available gasoline and not dependent on supply by outside factors.4
Stanislaw Kozak, a Pole who participated in the building of Belzec, describes the first stages of construction:
In October 1941, three SS men came to Belzec and requested from the municipality twenty men for work. The municipality allotted twenty workers, residents of Belzec, and I was among them. . . . We began the work on November 1, 1941. We built barracks close to the side track of the railway. One barrack, which was close to the railway section, was 50 meters long and 12.5 meters wide. . . . The second barrack, 25 meters long and 12.5 meters wide, was for the Jews destined for the “baths.” Not far from this barrack we built a third barrack, 12 meters long and 8 meters wide. This barrack was divided into three chambers by a wooden wall, so that each chamber wa
s 4 meters wide and 8 meters long. It was 2 meters high. The inside walls of this barrack were of double boards with a vacant space between them filled by us with sand. The walls inside the barracks were covered with pap. In addition, the ground and walls up to 1.10 meters were covered by sheet-metal. . . . From the second to the third barrack led a closed corridor, 2 meters wide, 2 meters high, and 10 meters long. This corridor led to a corridor in the third barrack where the doors to its three chambers were located. Each chamber of this barrack had on its northern side a door 1.80 meters high and 1.10 meters wide. These doors, like those in the corridor, were covered with rubber. All the doors in this barrack could be opened from the outside only. These doors were built with strong boards 7.5 cm in diameter and were secured ftom the outside with a wooden bar held by two iron hooks against pressure from inside the barrack.
In each of the three chambers of this barrack a water pipe was installed 10 cm above the floor. In addition, on the western wall in each chamber in the corner, was a water pipe 1 meter above the ground, with an open joint, turned toward the center of the room. These pipes with the joint were connected through the wall to a pipe that ran under the floor. In each of the three chambers of this barrack was installed an oven weighing 250 kg. It was expected that the pipe joint would later be connected with the oven. The oven was 1.10 meters high, 55 cm wide and 55 cm long. . . . During the time that we Poles built the barracks, the “Blacks” [Ukrainians] erected the fences of the extermination camp, which were made of dense barbed wire. After we Poles had completed building the three above-mentioned barracks, the Germans dismissed us, on December 22, 1941. . . .5
When the Polish workers had finished their work and left, a group of Jews from ghettos in the vicinity of Belzec, mainly from Lubycze-Krolewska and Male-Mosty, were brought to the camp. Some of these Jews were skilled workers—carpenters, smiths, and builders. They continued the construction of the camp.6
The installations and buildings required to begin the mass killings were ready by the end of February 1942. The first transports of Jews were used for experimental killings, to check the efficiency and capacity of the gas chambers and the technique of the extermination process. There were two or three such experimental transports of four to six freight cars with 100 to 250 Jews in each of them. These experimental killings lasted a few days and the last group to be murdered were the Jewish prisoners who had been engaged in building the camp.
Mieczyslaw Kudyba, a Pole who lived in Belzec, testified about these experimental killings:
The Germans took out a group of Jews from Lubycze-Krolewska and brought them by car to the Belzec camp. One Jew from that group told me that he had been in the camp some time cutting pine trees. One day all the Jews were driven into a barrack. This Jew was able to hide and later to escape. While in hiding, he heard long screams from the barrack in which the Jews had been locked and then silence. This was the first experimental killing in Belzec. I heard that this Jew who escaped was later caught by the Germans and killed.7
When these experimental killings were carried out, the system that would supply the gas was not yet ready. Therefore, the gas used for these killings was bottled carbon monoxide. Shortly afterwards, however, a self-contained monoxide gas system was developed, and an armored car engine of 250 horsepower was installed in a shed outside the gas chamber. From it, a pipe channeled the gas inside.
Adolf Eichmann, who visited Belzec at that time and saw the gas chambers, wrote:
. . . at the turn of the year 1941/42, the chief of the Security Police and SD Heydrich told me . . . “I come from the Reichsführer; the Führer has now ordered the physical extermination of the Jews.” He informed me further that the Reichsführer had instructed Globocnik, the SS and Police Leader of Lublin, to use the Soviet antitank ditches for the mass annihilation of the Jews. I myself should travel there and submit to him a report about the implementation of the operation. . . . I traveled in the direction of Lublin; I don’t know what the place is called. A Hauptsturmführer accompanied me. I met there a Hauptmann of the Order Police [Wirth]. I expressed astonishment that the small house, completely secluded, was built, and he told me: “Here the Jews are being gassed now.”8
Wirth carried out experiments to determine the most efficient method of handling the transports of Jews from the time of their arrival at the camp until their murder and burial. He developed some basic concepts for the process of extermination and for camp structure. The basic structure of the camp and the various actions the victims were made to do as soon as they left the train were intended to ensure that they would not grasp the fact that they had been brought for extermination. The aim was to give the victims the impression that they had arrived at a labor camp or a transit camp from where they would be sent to a labor camp. The deportees were to believe this until they were closed into the gas chambers camouflaged as baths.
The second principle of the extermination process was that everything should be carried out with the utmost speed. The victims should be rushed, made to run, so that they had no time to look round, to reflect, or to understand what was going on. This also supported the basic principle of deceiving the victims. They should be shocked, and their reactions paralyzed in order to prevent escape or resistance. The speed of the extermination process served yet an additional purpose: it increased the killing capacity of the camp. More transports could be brought and annihilated in one day.
According to Wirth’s annihilation scheme, the Jews themselves should carry out all physical work involved in the extermination process of a transport. A group of a few dozen or even a few hundred young, strong Jews were selected from among the victims after they disembarked the train. It was their duty to remove the corpses from the gas chambers and bury them. They also collected and arranged the clothes, suitcases, and other goods left behind by the murdered Jews. These Jews were kept working for a day or so, then they were murdered and were replaced by others who would be taken from the arriving transports.
Another group of Jews, among them tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, and other skilled workers, had to be kept in each camp to carry out services for the German and Ukrainian staff. This group, which numbered a few dozen Jewish prisoners, were called “court Jews” (Hofjuden). They had to be kept entirely separate from the Jews selected from the arriving transports and engaged in the extermination process. They were kept for longer periods, but even from among them people were sent frequently to the gas chambers and were replaced by others.
The entire camp occupied a relatively small, almost square area; the north, west, and east sides each measured 275 meters, and the south side 265 meters. It was surrounded by a high fence of wire netting, topped by barbed wire and camouflaged with branches. Young trees were also planted around it to prevent observation from outside. Three watchtowers were placed in the corners of the camp, two on the east side, the third on the southwest corner. An additional watchtower was in the center of the camp close to the gas chamber. A railway spur, about 500 meters in length, ran from the station in Belzec and led through the gate on the north side of the camp. The southern and eastern sides were bordered by a pine forest.
As construction continued, Belzec was divided into two sub-camps. Camp I, in the northern and western part, was the reception and administration area; Camp II, on the eastern part, was the extermination area. The reception area included the railway ramp, which could accommodate twenty railway cars, the assembly square for the arriving deportees, and two barracks, one for undressing and the second to store the clothes and goods the victims had brought with them. The administration area included two dwelling barracks for the Jewish prisoners, their laundry, kitchen, and store barracks, and the roll-call square (Appellplatz). Close to the entrance gate, which was on the north side of the camp, was the guardhouse, permanently attended by SS men and Ukrainians. On the left of the entrance gate was the Ukrainians’ area, separated from the other parts of the camp by barbed wire. It included three barracks: living quarters, a kitchen, and a
barrack for their clinic, dentist, and barber.
Camp II, the extermination area, included the gas chambers and the burial ditches, which were in the east and northeast sections of the camp. The gas chambers were surrounded by trees, and a camouflage net was stretched over the roof to prevent aerial observation. At a later stage two barracks were erected in this area: living quarters and the kitchen of the Jewish prisoners who worked in this part of the camp. Camp II was fenced off from the other parts of the camp with a specially guarded entrance gate. A narrow passageway, 2 meters wide and a few dozen meters long, called “the tube” (der Schlauch), was enclosed on both sides by barbed wire and partly by a wooden fence. It connected the undressing barrack in Camp I to the gas chambers in Camp II.
Construction in Belzec continued for months, even as the entire extermination procedure was being carried out.
The living quarters of the SS men were close to the Belzec railway station, about 500 meters outside the camp. They consisted of three houses; one contained the headquarters and kitchen. The houses were fenced off, and a Ukrainian guard was posted at the entrance gate. Close to the SS living quarters were some houses where Polish civilians lived.9