The Belzec Death Camp

by Chris Webb

  As the train had to depart to schedule and there was no other person who could take responsibility for loading on the Jews, there was nothing left for me to do but to take charge of the transport train in its unsatisfactory state. The condition of the train notwithstanding, the insufficient number of guards—i.e. one officer to nine men in the escort unit—would have been reason enough for me to refuse to take over command of the train. However, in accordance with my orders, I had to take over the train with the escort manpower I had. Hptw. Zitzmann stayed at the station with his guard unit until the train departed. Both units had their hands full preventing Jews escaping from the cars, since it had meanwhile become so dark that it was not possible to see the next car properly. It was not possible to establish how many Jews escaped from the train before its departure alone, however, it is probable that almost all were eliminated during their escape attempts.

  At 20.50 the train departed from Kolomea on schedule. Shortly before its departure I divided up my escort squad, as had been planned beforehand, putting five men at the front and five men at the rear of the train. As the train was, however, very long—fifty-one cars with a total load of 8, 200 Jews—this distribution of manpower turned out to be wrong and the next time we stopped I ordered the guards to post themselves right along the length of the train. The guards had to stay on the brake housing for the entire journey. We had only been travelling a short time when the Jews attempted to break out of the wagons on both sides and even through the roof. Some of them succeeded in doing so, with the result that five sations before Stanislau I phoned the stationmaster in Stanislau and asked him to have nails and boards ready, so that we could board up the damaged cars temporarily and to put some of his Bahnschutz (Track guards) at my disposal to guard the train.

  When the train reached Stanislau the workers from Stanislau station as well as the Bahnschutz were at the station waiting for our train. As soon as the train stopped, work began. An hour and a half later I considered it adequately repaired and ordered its departure. However, all of this was of very little help, for only a few stations later when the train was stationary I established that a number of very large holes had been made and all the barbed wire on the ventilation windows had been ripped out. As the train was departing I even established that in one of the cars someone was using a hammer and pliers. When these Jews were questioned as to why they had these tools in their possession they informed me that they had been told that they might well be of use at their next place of work. I immediately took away the tools. I then had to have the train boarded up at each station at which it stopped, otherwise it would not have been possible to continue the journey at all.

  At 11.15 hours the train arrived in Lemberg. As there was no replacement escort squad, my squad had to continue guarding the train until Belzec. After a short stop at Lemberg station the train went to the suburban station of Kleparow, where I handed over nine wagons to SS-Obersturmführer Schulze which had been marked with an ‘L’ and had been designated for Lemberg compulsory labor camp. SS-Obersturmführer Schulze then loaded on about 1,000 more Jews and at about 13.30 hours the transport departed again.

  At Lemberg the engine was replaced and an old engine was attached which was not powerful enough for the weight of the train. The train driver never managed to reach top speed with his engine so that the train, particularly when travelling uphill, moved so slowly that the Jews could jump off without any risk of injury. I ordered the train driver on numerous occasions to drive faster but this was impossible. It was particularly unfortunate that the train frequently stopped in open country.

  The escort squad had meanwhile used up all the ammunition that had been brought with us as well as an extra 200 bullets that I had obtained from some soldiers, with the result that we had to rely on stones when the train was moving and fixed bayonets when the train was stationary. The ever-increasing panic among the Jews, caused by the intense heat, the overcrowding in the wagons, the stink of the dead bodies—when the wagons were unloaded there were about 2,000 dead in the train—made the transport almost impossible.

  At 18.45 the transport arrived in Belzec and I handed it over to the SS-Obersturmführer and head of the camp at 19.30 hours. Towards 22.00 hours the transport was unloaded. I had to be present during unloading. I was not able to establish the number of Jews that had escaped.[112]

  Thomas Toivi Blatt, a Jew who lived in Izbiza, a typical shtetl in southeastern Poland, tried to escape Nazi persecution to Hungary. In his book, From the Ashes of Sobibor, he recounts his journey, which took him past Belzec on his way to Lvov:

  It was one in the morning, time to get ready for the train. Slowly one after another, we departed. The date is etched on my memory: 26 October 1942..... Suddenly a kind of subdued anxiety spread among the passengers. They closed the windows; some lit cigarettes. What had happened? Why did the talk turn to whispers? I caught scraps of sentences. “They gas..... fat for soap.” Despite the closed windows, the odor of rotting flesh seeped through.

  Belzec! Of course. I grew numb with shock. We were passing near one of the rumoured death factories. My heart pounding I looked out of the window. There were scarce woods, then in the distance I saw flames—now fading, now shooting higher into the sky. This was the destiny I was trying to escape. The smell receded as the train raced on, but I could still see the reflection of fire in the sky.[113]

  Janett Margolies, a Jewish woman, was deported from the Tarnopol ghetto, in eastern Galicia, on November 8, 1942, and escaped from one of the death convoys en route to Belzec. She recalled:

  On the way, a policeman came close to me, whispering quietly into my ear to join the younger ladies in the wagon. When we arrived at the railroad station, the men were separated, and we were pushed toward the railroad cars. I did observe where the young were concentrated, joining them in the wagon, which was closed and sealed.

  We were eighty women. The small windows were high up, with bars and thorny wire. Once inside, we found out that somebody had smuggled in a file to cut bars. I started to organize a crew. Standing on top of the others, we started to work. The train continued to run. When the job was finished, and the bars cut, each candidate, legs through the window, then hold on with their hands, later with only one hand, and with a strong swing, jump into the direction of the running train.

  I stood watching the jumping. Most of them were killed on the spot. Some were killed by trains coming from the opposite direction. Others were shot by Gestapo watchmen. Those who succeeded were later caught by special railroad watchmen. Of all the Tarnopol train jumpers, I think that I was the only left alive.

  I took quite a while to decide to jump, or not to jump. I realized fully, how hopeless the situation looked.... I decided to jump. Already hanging outside the wagon, I got tangled up in the thorny wire. Being scared, I cried out loudly, feeling that I was falling down. A shot was heard over my head, it was a watchman. Luckily he missed. At the same moment I noticed a locomotive running straight toward me. With my last strength, I rolled over downwards into a depression. All this lasted just a few seconds. I was saved, but badly injured, bleeding from my head and hands. I tore out a little frozen grass, putting it on my wounds. I succeeded in stopping the bleeding. Later I wiped it off my face, bringing myself to order.[114]

  Chapter X

  The End of the Slaughter

  During the months between September 1942 until December 1942, the transports continued to roll into Belzec daily and the slaughter continued unabated. From Galicia, the Lublin District, Krakow, and a number of other cities, towns, and villages, the Jews were rounded up and shipped to Belzec. In the month of September, major deportations took place from Bilgoraj, Kolomea, Stanislawow, Stryj, and Sanok, and on October 28, 1942, 7,000 Jews were deported from Krakow, with further deportations from Kolomea, Stryj, and Sandomierz. In November, the last major deportation from Lvov took place over three days from November 18–21, 1942, where between 8,000 to 10,000 Jews were taken to Belzec.

  Rudolf Reder w
itnessed the particularly brutal killing of Azriel Szeps, the vice president of the Zamosc Judenrat, during November 1942:

  It was around November 15, when the weather had already turned cold and snow and mud covered the ground. A large transport from Zamosc arrived like many others in the middle of a blizzard. The transport contained the whole Judenrat (Jewish Council).[115]

  Everyone was standing there naked and, in the normal course of events, the men were driven to the chambers and the women to the barracks where hair was shaved off. But the President of the Judenrat[116] was ordered to remain in the yard. As the Askars herded the transport to be killed, a whole parade of SS men stood around the President of the Judenrat. I do not know his name, I saw a middle-aged man as white as a corpse and completely calm.[117]

  The SS-men ordered the orchestra to move into the yard and await orders. The orchestra made up of six musicians usually played in the space between the gas chambers and the graves. They played without a break, on instruments gotten from the murdered. I was working then on some masonry work and saw them all. The SS-men ordered the orchestra to play the tune, ‘Es geht alles vorbei’ and ‘Drei Lilien, kommt ein Reiter gefahren, bricht der Lilien.’ They played on violins, flutes and an accordion.

  This went on for some time. Afterwards they stood the President of the Zamosc Judenrat against a wall and beat him with lead-tipped canes, mostly about the head and face, until the blood flowed. Jirmann, the fat Gestapo man Schwarz, Schmidt, and several Askars carried out the torture. They ordered their victim to dance and jump to their blows and the music.

  After several hours, they brought him a quarter-loaf of bread and forced him with beatings to eat it. He stood there with the blood trickling down, indifferent, serious and I didn’t hear a single moan. This man’s tribulations continued for seven hours. The SS-men stood laughing: “Das ist eine hohere Person, Prasident des Judenrates’ (This is a dignitary, the head of the Judenrat), they called out with loud, cruel bravado. Not until six p.m. did the Gestapo-man Schmidt push him along to the edge of the grave, shoot him in the head, and kick him onto the heap of gassed corpses.[118]

  Reder, at the end of November 1942, was sent under escort to Lvov to collect sheet metal by Fritz Jirmann. Reder recounted what happened next:

  I went there, loaded into a truck with four Gestapo-men and a sentry. In Lemberg (Lvov), after a whole day loading sheet metal I was left alone in the truck with one hoodlum guarding me. The rest went off to have a little fun. I sat there for a few hours without thinking or moving. Then I chanced to notice that my guard had dozed off and was snoring. By reflex, without a moments thought, I slipped out of the truck; the thug was still asleep.

  I stood on the sidewalk, for a while longer, I pretended to be fussing with something near the sheet metal, and then I moved slowly away. Legionow Street was very busy. I pulled my cap down. The street was dark and no-one saw me. I remembered where my landlady lived, a Polish woman, and made my way there. She hid me.[119]

  Right to the end of its operational life the horrors of Belzec continued, and Mieczyslaw Nieduzak testified in Belzec on October 17, 1945, about several instances of brutality:

  During the time of the death camp in Belzec was being built and then in operation, I lived in Rawa Ruska. Towards the end of 1942 I travelled through Belzec station and while waiting there for a train, I began a conversation with the ‘Blacks’ as I know the Russian language well; the ‘Blacks’ began to tell me certain things about the death camp.

  One of these ‘Blacks’ boasted to me how he had torn a young Jewish girl from her mother—a young girl who had clung tightly to her mother—seized her by the hair and with all his strength beaten her against a post so that her spine was broken and the girl was killed instantly.

  The other told me of the following occurrence; as he drove the Jews into the gas chambers, one of them hit him on the head with a piece of wood; he was forced to shoot this Jew. A third ‘Black’ told the following story; A Jew who had knocked a ‘Black’ to the ground was punished in the following way—by being tied to a post and rubbed so hard with a goosefeather floor polisher that his naked bones showed. They only stopped when he lost consciousness. This happened before the eyes of the Jews who were employed in the death camp and had been forced to watch.

  When I began to ask questions about how the Jews were killed in the gas chambers, they broke off the conversation with the advice that I should not ask that.[120]

  The last transports to arrive at the Belzec death camp came from Rohatyn on December 8, 1942, and Rawa Ruska between December 7–11, 1942, where between 2,000 and 2,500 were murdered.

  With these final transports Belzec ceased its mass murder function, and for the rest of its existence the death camp staff and prisoners exhumed and burned the Jewish victims that had crossed its threshold. The next chapter will cover in greater detail what happened between November 1942 until March 1943.

  Chapter XI

  Exhumation and Cremation

  November 1942–March 1943

  Rudolf Reder claims in his book that Heinrich Himmler visited Belzec death camp in October 1942, along with SS-Gruppenführer Fritz Katzmann, then SS-Polizeiführer for Lvov district, in mid-October 1942. It is possible that this visit triggered the vast exhumation and cremation program that commemced in Belzec in November 1942. That was the case with the Treblinka death camp, following Himmler’s visit in February 1943; having found out that the victims had been buried and not burnt, he ordered that cremations should begin immediately.

  Heinrich Gley, an SS-Oberscharführer, testified after the war:

  As I remember, the gassing stopped at the end of 1942, when snow was already falling. Then the unearthing and cremation of the corpses began. It lasted from November 1942 until March 1943. The cremation was conducted day and night without interruption. At first the burning took place at one site, and later at two. One cremating site had the capacity to burn 2,000 corpses in twenty-four hours.

  About four weeks after the beginning of the cremation operation, the second burning site was erected . On the average, during five months, at the first burning site about 300,000 corpses were cremated, and in four months at the second burning site about 240,000 corpses. Naturally, these are average estimates.[121]

  Maria Daniel, a Polish woman who lived in the village of Belzec, testified after the war:

  We could see a machine that took out the corpses from the graves and threw them into the fire. There were a few such fires going simultaneously. At that time a dreadful smell dominated the whole area, a smell of burned human bones and bodies. From the moment they began burning the corpses, from all directions of the camp came the smell of the corpses. When the Germans completed the burning of the corpses, they dismantled the camp.[122]

  Heinrich Gley provided a statement on February 6, 1962, in Münster:

  I was assigned with a big Jewish work brigade to the cremation of the corpses by means of railway lines which served as a grate. About 80–90 Jews then worked under my supervision in three shifts. The cremation site was as long a rail and about 4–5 metres wide. The rails were placed on top of big rocks and narrow-gauge rails served as a cross-mesh. The cremation surface could take about 200 corpses. First, a wood fire was kindled under the iron grate. During the course of the cremation operation the corpses later served as the only fuel. From time to time the badly twisted rails had to be replaced by new ones.[123]

  Gisela Gdula, who lived in a house in Belzec village that housed the bakery that served the death camp, was interviewed in the survivng building on 20 July, 2002, and recalled that “The pyres were like a volcano and the villagers scraped human fat off their windows.”[124]

  Gley testified further:

  When all the bodies had been removed from the graves, a special search commando sifted through the earth and extracted all the leftovers: bone, clumps of hair, etc and threw these remains on the fire. An additional mechanical excavator was brought to accelerate the work. One excavator came from
Sobibor and the other from the Warsaw district, which were operated by Hackenholt.[125]

  Rudolf Reder recalled in his book Belzec how he later found out how the evidence of the crimes committed at Belzec was erased:

  And later, the local residents told me, the bones were ground up and the wind had scattered the dust over the fields and forests. A prisoner named Spilke, brought for the purpose from the Janowska Camp to Belzec, set up a machine for grinding human bones. He told me that he found only piles of bones there and that all the buildings had disappeared. Later he managed to escape and save himself. He gave me his account of this right after the liberation of Lvov by the Red Army.[126]

  Two of the SS camp personnel died in separate incidents during March 1943; first Fritz Jirmann was accidentally shot and killed by Heinrich Gley, who testified about this incident in 1963:

  One evening, the company commander, Jirmann, ordered me to go with him to a copse near the Kommandantur where a bunker was located. I did not know what he intended doing there, but on the way I learned from him that two Ukrainians were locked-up there who, during their guard duty had broken into the valuables room.

  As Jirmann opened the bunker door, both Ukrainians lept on him and knocked him to the ground. As he dropped the torch during the incident , I could not see how he—Jirrman—had fallen to the ground as the first Ukrainian came out of the bunker. I assumed it was one of the Ukrainians and fired at him. As a matter of fact, it was Jirmann I had fatally wounded.[127]

  Jirmann was buried in the German military cemetery in Tomaszow Lubelski, and his remains were later re-buried in the Przemysl German military cemetery in 1996.