The Belzec Death Camp

by Chris Webb

  In the autumn of 1943 he was ordered to Italy, where he became commandant of the camp at San Sabba, Trieste. Captured by British troops in Bad Gastein, Austria, in May 1945. In 1948, he was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment by the Magdeburg Landesgericht for participation in euthanasia crimes. He was released in April 1956, and he was employed as a casual worker and a barman in Munich.

  In 1965, he was tried by jury in Landesgericht I in Munich at the Belzec trial and was sentenced to a total of four years and six months imprisonment for the crime of acting as an accessory in the common murder of 300,000 people, and for his role in the common murder of 150 people. Oberhauser was interviewed by Claude Lanzmann in the film Shoah, in the Franziskaner Poststubl about Christian Wirth and the number of Jews murdered at Belzec.

  ORLIEWSKI, Eduard. Born during 1905 in Berlin. Served at the T4 institution at Pirna-Sonnenstein as a “burner.” Served at Belzec. Fate unknown.

  SCHEMMEL, Ernst. Born on September 11, 1883, in Kirchhain, north Saxony. A career police officer, he was a member of the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo), the plainclothes detective squads. Commandeered to T4, he was employed as head of administration at the Pirna-Sonnenstein and Hartheim institutions. Transferred in early 1942 to the Belzec administative office, and then, for a short time—late September to early October 1942—as acting commandant at Treblinka. He died in Dresden on December 10, 1943, whilst home on leave, aged 60.

  SCHLUCH, Karl Alfred. Born on October 25, 1905, in Lauenburg, Pommern. He spent his childhood with his grandparents. After attending elementary school he became an agricultural worker. From April 1930 he was employed as an attendant at the sanatorium run by Dr. Wiener in Bernau, near Berlin. He passed his public nursing examinaion in 1932.

  He joined the NSDAP in 1936 and the T4 organization on June 13, 1940, where he served at Grafeneck and Hadamar institutions. During the winter of 1941–42 he served in an Organisation Todt transportation unit for wounded soldiers on the Eastern Front.

  Schluch was transferred to Belzec during June 1942, where he served on the Ramp and accompanied the naked Jews through “der Schlauch” to the gas chambers. After Belzec was closed down, he served in the Poniatowa Jewish labor camp. In the autumn of 1943 he was sent to Italy to fight the partisans. At the end of the war, he was arrested by US forces, but released on July 6, 1945.

  After the war, he returned to being an agricultural and then construction worker, before returning to the nursing profession at a hospital in Bedburg-Hau.

  SCHMIDT, Fritz. Born on November 29, 1906 in Eibau, Görlitz district in eastern Saxony. A motor mechanic by trade, he was employed in the T4 euthanasia institute at Pirna-Sonnenstein in 1940 as a guard and driver and in 1941 he was transferred to Bernburg euthanasia institute. He served in Belzec from June / July 1942 until September 1942, when he was transferred to Treblinka to supervise the maintenance and running of the gassing engines in the Upper Camp. He was also in charge of the SS-garage and supervised the metal-work shop. He was transferred to Sobibor during September 1943 and he stayed there until the camp was liquidated in November 1943. After Treblinka he served with Einsatz R in Trieste, northern Italy. Captured by the Americans at the end of the war, he was released and he returned to Germany. He was arrested by the Soviet millitary authorities, placed on trial, and on December 14, 1949, was sentenced to nine years imprisoment. He escaped and fled to West Germany, where he died on February 4, 1982, aged 76.

  SCHNIEDER, Friedrich. A Volksdeutscher who was in charge of the Trawnikimänner at Belzec.

  SCHWARZ, Gottfried. Born in 1913, in Furth. He served at Brandenburg, Grafeneck, and Bernburg T4 institutes as a “burner.” Schwarz was deputy commandant of Belzec and assisted in the construction of the death camp. According to Erich Fuchs, Schwarz also served at Sobibor, taking part in trial gassings.

  Schwarz was regarded by Rudolf Reder as one of the most cruel SS guards. When Belzec was liquidated, he was appointed commandant of the Dorohucza labor camp. Schwarz was ordered to Trieste and was killed by Italian communist partisans in San Pietro, near Civdale, on June 19, 1944. He was buried at the German millitary cemetery at Costermano, Italy.

  TAUSCHER, Fritz. Born on May 20, 1903, in Planitz, near Zwickau. Worked as a supervisor at the registry office in Pirna-Sonnenstein. Also served at Brandenburg and Hartheim T4 institutes.

  Transferred to Belzec in October 1942, he served there until March 1943 and was in charge of the cremation of the exhumed bodies. Tauscher, according to SS NCO’s Juhrs and Zierke, was the last commandant of Dorohucza—the Jewish labor camp—after also having served at Budzyn Jewish labor camp. He was then posted to Trieste. Committed suicide whilst on a remand prison in Hamburg.

  UNVERHAU, Heinrich. Born on November 26, 1911, in Vienenburg, Goslar. In April 1925 he became a plumber’s apprentice, but, as a result of an accident at work, he lost the sight in his right eye and was forced to end his apprenticeship. He became a muscian, and from 1934 worked as a nurse.

  In January 1940 he was ordered to join T4, and he was employed at Gafeneck and Hadamar institutes as a nurse. In the winter of 1941–42 he was drafted to the Eastern Front for service in the Organisation Todt, looking after the wounded in Raume Wjasma.

  In June 1942 he was posted to the Belzec death camp, and, in November 1942, he was hospitalized at Tomaszow Lubelski with spotted typhus that caused him to lose his right eye completely. At the death camp he was responsible for sorting the possessions in the railway sheds located just outside the camp, opposite Belzec railway station.

  In the summer of 1943 he was posted to Sobibor, where he supervised the cleaning up the undressing area in Lager II and one of the sorting barracks. Unverhau was ordered back to the former death camp site at Belzec to help with the planting of trees to cover the traces of the crimes committed there. He repeated this role at Treblinka in September 1943, returning to Sobibor in November 1943, just in time to help with the re-planting there.

  Unverhau was cleared at the Belzec trial in 1963, and was also acquitted at the Sobibor trial in Hagen in 1966.

  VALLASTER, Josef. Born on February 5, 1910, in Silbertal, Austria. Served in the T4 institutes of Hadamar and Hartheim. Posted to Belzec, he served there between January and April 1942, and from there went to Sobibor, the same month. He worked in Lager III, supervising the gassing and burial—and later burning—of the victims. He often drove the narrow-gauge railway engine that pulled the trucks filled with the elderly and disabled from the ramp to Lager III. One of the most brutal SS NCOs in Sobibor, he was killed in the prisoner revolt on October 14, 1943, in the shoemakers workshop.

  ZANKER, Hans. Born on September 8, 1905 in Sachsen. He served in the T4 institutes of Pirna-Sonnenstein as a cook. Served at the death camps in Poland including, Belzec, from September 1942 until May 1943, when the camp closed. Also served at Sobibor, and Treblinka. He was posted to Trieste, Italy. No more details known.

  ZIERKE, Ernst Theodor Franz. Born on May 6, 1905, in Krampe. Son of a railroad worker. After graduating from elementary school he worked as a forester, and in 1921 was apprenticed to be a blacksmith. After passing the blacksmith apprenticeship exams he was employed in agriculture from 1925.

  In 1934, he changed careers and became a nurse at a clinic at Neuruppin near Brandenburg, and was summoned to the T4 Main Office in Berlin in December 1939. Served at the T4 institutes at Grafeneck and Hadamar.

  In the winter of 1941–42, he was drafted into the Organisation Todt to care for the wounded in Russia. He returned to Germany and worked at a T4 institute at Eichberg, near Rudesheim. Posted to Belzec in June 1942, where he served until March 1943. At Belzec he served on the Ramp.

  In March 1943, he was transferred along with Robert Juhrs to the Jewish labor camp at Dorohucza, where peat was dug, until November 1943. Zierke was amongst the SS who escorted the Jewish Arbeitshaftlinge from Dorohucza to the neaby Jewish labor camp at Trawniki, where all of them were shot as part of Aktion Erntefest

  Zierke was sent to Sobib
or to help with the closure of the camp, and he formed part of the cordon that watched over the final liquidation of the Jewish workers from Treblinka. He was then posted to Italy. Zierke was acquitted at the Belzec trial in Munich in 1964, and was released from custody during the Sobibor trial in Hagen on health grounds. Zierke died on May 23, 1972.

  SUPPORT STAFF

  GOCKEL, Rudolf. Worked for the Reichsbahn, was responsible for the Belzec railway station, and drove the trains packed with deportees into the death camp. He was imprisoned in Zamosc for three years, but never charged. He died in 1965 in Lauffen am Neckar, near Stuttgart.

  Chapter XV

  Wartime Reports

  About the Death Camp

  The Polish Underground passed on information about Belzec to the Polish government-in-exile in London, and some of these reports were published by the Polish Ministry of Information. The Home Army (Armia Krajowa), or the Delegatura, passed on information via monthly reports using a network of Underground messengers, who travelled through occupied Europe via neutral countries such as Spain or Sweden to reach the government-in-exile.

  The Delegatura report for April 1942 included a comprehensive account of the Belzec extermination camp:

  The camp was fully completed a few days before March 17, 1942. From that day transports with Jews began to arrive from the direction of Lvov and Warsaw. On the first day five transports arrived, afterward, one transport arrived daily from each direction. The transport enters the railway spur of Belzec camp after disembarkation, lasting half an hour, the train returns empty. The observations of the local people (the camp is within sight and hearing distance of the inhabitants near the railway station) led all of them to one conclusion: that there is a mass murder of the Jews inside the camp. The following facts testify to this:

  1. Between March 17 and April 13, about fifty-two transports (each of eighteen to thirty-five freight cars with an average of 1,500 people) arrived in the camp.

  2. No Jews left the camp, neither during the day nor the night.

  3. No food was supplied to the camp (whereas bread and other food articles had been dispatched to the Jews who had worked earlier on the construction of the camp).

  4. Lime was brought to the camp.

  5. The transports arrived at a fixed time. Before the arrival of a transport, no Jews were seen in the camp.

  6. After each transport, about two freight cars with clothing are removed from the camp to the railway stores. (The guards steal clothes.)

  7. Jews in underwear were seen in the area of the camp.

  8. In the area of the camp there are three barracks; they cannot accommodate even one-tenth of the Jews.

  9. In the area of the camp, a strong odor can be smelled on warmer days.

  10. The guards pay for vodka, which they drink in large quantities, with any requested sum, and frequently with watches and valuables.

  11. Jews arrived in Belzec (the township) looking for a witness who would testify that Jews are being killed there. They were ready to pay 120,000 zloty..... They did not find a volunteer. It is unknown by which means the Jews are liquidated in the camp. There are three assumptions: (1) electricity; (2) gas; (3) by pumping out the air. With regard to (1) : there is no visible source of electricity; with regard to (2): no supply of gas and no residue of the remaining gas after the ventilation of the gas chamber were observed; with regard to (3): there are no factors that deny this possibility. It was even verified that during the building of one of the barracks, the walls and floor were covered with metal sheets (for some purpose). In the area of the camp huge pits were dug in the autumn. At that time it was assumed that there would be underground stores. Now the purpose of this work is clear. From the particular barrack where the Jews are taken for so-called disinfection, a narrow railway leads to these pits. It was observed that the ‘disinfected’ Jews were transported to a common grave by this trolley.In Belzec the term ‘Totenlager’ (death camp) was heard in connection with the Jewish camp. The leadership of the camp is in the hands of twelve SS-men (the commander is Hauptmann Wirth) who have forty guards for help.[144]

  Dr. Ignacy Schwarzbart, a member of the Polish National Council, stated in London on November 15, 1942:

  The methods applied in this mass extermination are, apart from executions, firing squads, electrocution and lethal gas-chambers. An electrocution station is installed at Belzec camp. Transport of settlers arrive at a siding, on the spot, where the execution is to take place. The camp is policed by Ukrainians. The victims are ordered to strip naked, ostensibly to have a bath, and are then led to a barracks with a metal plate for a floor. The door is then locked, electric current passes through the victims, and their death is almost instantaneous. The bodies are loaded on the wagons and taken to a mass grave, some distance from the camp.[145]

  In the Polish Fortnightly Review dated Tuesday, December 1, 1942, published in London by the Polish Ministry of Information, the main feature was a report on the extermination of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. It also briefly mentioned Belzec, and, in an annexe to the main report, a fuller account regarding the extermination camp at Belzec was also covered:

  Main Report

  A camp was organised at Belzec for the special purpose of execution by electrocution and here in the course of about a month, in March and April 1942, 80,000 Jews from the Lublin, Lwow, and part of the Kielce provinces were executed. Out of Lublin’s 30,000 Jews only 2,500 were left, 70 of them being women.[146]

  Extraordinary Report from the Jew-extermination Camp at Belzec-Annex, July 10th 1942

  According to information from a German employed at the extermination camp, it is situated in Belzec, by the station, and is barred off by barriers of barbed wire. Inside the wire, and all round the outside, Ukrainians are on guard. The executions are carried out in the following fashion: When a trainload of Jews arrives at the station in Belzec, it is shunted by a side-track up to the wire surrounding the place of execution, at which point there is a change in the engine crew and train guards.

  From the wire onward the train is serviced by German drivers who take it to the unloading point, where the track ends. After unloading, the men go to a barracks on the right, the women to a barracks situated on the left, where they strip, ostensibly in readiness for a bath.After they have undressed both groups go to a third barracks where there is an electrified plate, where the executions are carried out. Then the bodies are taken by train to a trench situated outside the wire, and some thirty metres deep. This trench was dug by Jews, who were all executed afterwards. The Ukrainians on guard are also to be executed when the job is finished. The Ukrainians acting as guards are loaded with money and stolen valuables; they pay 400 zlotys for a litre of vodka, 2,000 zlotys and jewellery for relations with a woman.[147]

  The Polish Underground reported on a spontaneous act of resistance took place in Belzec on June 13, 1942:

  The revolt in the camp, probably the first one, took place on June 13th, when Jews were summoned to remove the corpses of murdered women and children: at the horrible sight (they were standing in the gas chamber holding each others’ waists and necks, presumably in the prenatal reflexes), they attacked the ‘Wachmannschaft’ (the guards), which resulted in a struggle in which 4–6 Germans and nearly all the Jews died; several Jews managed to escape.[148]

  Dr. Schwarzbart sent a telegram to the Jewish Congress in New York on December 5, 1942, regarding the extermination of the Jews in Poland, including the mass gassing of Jews in Belzec. The extract read as follows: “Special official envoy Gentile escaped and arrived here left capital this October Saw Warsaw Ghetto on last August and September. Witnessed mass murder of one transport six thousand Jews at Belzec. Spoke to him yesterday 3 hours confirm all most horrible mass atrocities......”[149] This telegram can be seen in the chapter marked “Illustrations.”

  A British Intelligence report dated March 16, 1945, mentions a transport of Polish people to the Belzec death camp:

  It might be interesting to learn th
at during an ‘Action’ directed spefically against Aryan Poles, the latter were kidnapped in the streets, from streetcars, in stores, and public places. A transport consisting entirely of Aryan Poles was sent to Belzec, where they shared the fate of their Jewish compatriots. This however, only happened once.[150]

  Chapter XVI

  The Long Road to Justice

  Given that nearly half a million innocent Jewish men, women, and children were murdered in Belzec, the long road to justice is poorly traveled, with only Josef Oberhauser brought to stand trial in the 1960s for crimes committed at the Belzec extermination camp.

  One of the Belzec SS NCO’s, Heinrich Unverhau, was arrested and charged in 1948, accused of killing patients at the Grafeneck T4 institution. At Belzec, Unverhau had been in charge of the sorting depot, housed in the locomotive sheds, opposite the Belzec railway station. It was during the course of this trial that details began to emerge about the Belzec death camp and other Aktion Reinhardt camps. His testimony about Belzec and Sobibor death camps were discounted by the court as being irrelevant to the Grafeneck proceedings. After a lengthy hearing, Heinrich Unverhau was acquitted of all charges, as it was proven he had not participated in the killings.[151]

  Between the years 1959 and 1963, former SS NCO’s who had served at Belzec and other death camps that were part of Aktion Reinhardt, were arrested and subjected to pre-trial interrogations and pre-trial court hearings. These included Werner Dubois, Erich Fuchs, Heinrich Gley, Hans Girtzig, Robert Juhrs, Josef Oberhauser, Karl Schluch, Heinrich Unverhau, and Ernst Zierke. One of them, Hans Girtzig, was released due to ill-health, as he suffered from multiple sclerosis.[152]

  Robert Lorent, a member of the T4 organisation, made a statement regarding his visits to Belzec and a number of the camp personnel who were under investigation, on May 4, 1961, in the German city of Cologne: