The Holocaust of Belzec
In March, 1942, the Jews of the Lublin Province of Poland are deported to the Belzec death camp.
By the early 1942, gas chambers were being carried out in death camps. The Belzec camp was located in southern-eastern Poland in the Lublin District. It was originally established in 1940 as a slave labor camp. Between March and December of 1942, Belzec served as a German extermination center, at which between 550,00 and 600,000 Jews were killed. The Belzec became part of the German killing system on the seventeenth of March of 1942.
The German Nazi system of concentration camps and extermination camps were near the village of Belzec in Lublin province, Poland. By the autumn of the year there were three camps in the village itself and a number of satellite camps in areas where there were 11,000 prisoners at one time. Hundreds died from being over worked, starvation, disease, and brutal living conditions. Originally victims were exterminated in cells filled with diesel fumes. The camp was closed in the Spring of 1943, and traces were destroyed.
In the year 1942, the Belzec camp was completed. The gas was carried out in a wooden barrack that held 100 to 150 persons. Six gas chambers could hold about 1,500 persons. The exhaust gas was used to kill people. The first officers that were commanding were SS- Haupt-sturmfuhere and police captain Christian Wirth. At least 400,000 Jews were murdered in Belzec
On April 1, 1942, the first night of Passover, the Aktion had ended, with more than 15,000 Jews transported to the concentration camp. As is Warsaw, Bialystok, private German firms became interest in exploit the cheap available labor. Belzec was transformed from a "reservation" into a liquidation center. In the spring of 1942, the Germans began transporting to it not only to Jews from the Reich but also the first transports from other countries.
During World War II, the Nazis established extermination center to kill entire populations.
The notorious detention camp, Bergen-Belsen, was constructed in 1940 and “was near Hanover in northwest Germany, located between the villages Bergen and Belsen” (jewishvirtuallibrary.org), hence the name. Originally, the “camp was designed to hold 10,000 prisoners” (jewishvirtuallibrary.org) but, Bergen-Belsen rapidly grew. “In the first eighteen months of existence, there were already five satellite camps.” (holocaustresearchproject.org). Eventually, the “camp had eight sections: detention camp, two camps for women, a special camp, neutrals camp, ‘star camp’, Hungarian Camp, and a tent camp.” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, p.165) It also held prisoners who were too ill/weak to work at the “convalescent camp” (Bauer, Yehuda, p.359)
Poland was devastated when German forces invaded their country on September 1, 1939, marking the beginning of World War II. Still suffering from the turmoil of World War I, with Germany left in ruins, Hitler's government dreamt of an immense, new domain of "living space" in Eastern Europe; to acquire German dominance in Europe would call for war in the minds of German leaders (World War II in Europe). The Nazis believed the Germans were racially elite and found the Jews to be inferior to the German population. The Holocaust was the discrimination and the slaughter of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its associates (Introduction to the Holocaust). The Nazis instituted killing centers, also known as “extermination camps” or “death camps,” for being able to resourcefully take part in mass murder (Killing Centers: An Overview).
Various concentration camps were spread throughout Europe and Germany. Around 9000 Nazi work and concentration camps were set up by Hitler’s strong army forces. Of these camps, the most well-known was most definitely the infamous Auschwitz. About 90% of the Jews who were killed in the Holocaust were killed in the gas chambers in Auschwitz. Located ...
During the holocaust 17, 500, 00 victims were killed or displaced by the Nazi from 1933-1945. On the 24th of July 1994 the Russians liberated Liu Bolin in eastern Poland; just outside of the city they find the concentration camp. The SS had tried to kill the entire inmate and destroy all trace of the extermination plant but a Polish resistance group seized the camp before could complete their work. The gas chambers disguised as bath and disinfection rooms were captured intact. Crematoria still strewn smoking human ashes were only slightly damaged. Close by they found cabbage fields strewn with human bone meal fertilizer. Auschwitz was less than a hundred and seventy miles away.
The prisoners were ordered to do many horrific things in this camp. Plaszow was the most common forced labor camp for Jews located in Krakow
Bodies were often thrown into huge ditches located east of the chambers. Containing nothing but filthy, scrawny, and hopeless bodies. Five thousand to seven thousand Jews arrived each day increases to about 12,000 a day, though thousands were dead on arrival. This camp was the the last camp whose sole purpose was “extermination”. It was only fifty miles from the large city of warsaw, which blows my mind that people will still fully confidently try to convince people that the camps never happened. It became known as Treblinka I when the death camp, Treblinka II, was built. The camp was laid out in an irregular rectangle, 400 m by 600 m, surrounded by barbed wire and anti- tank spanish hors...
While brutal imprisonments were intended to work and starve detainees to death, killing camps, or concentration camps were constructed only with the end goal of slaughtering large quantities of individuals rapidly and productively. There were six distinctive elimination camps known as Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz, and Maidanek. Detainees that were compelled to move to these camps were advised to strip to clean up. Rather than it being a shower, the detainees were wheedled into the gas chambers and were slaughtered promptly. At Chelmno, rather than gas chambers, the detainees were moved into gas vans. Auschwitz alone, being the biggest focus and eradication constructed, is evaluated to have had 1.1 million individuals
For some, it seems that the Holocaust in another lifetime, but for others it will be something they will never forget. Holocaust was a time for fighting. The Jewish would fight for the right to live as they were killed solely for being Jewish. The Holocaust began in 1939 and would continue through 1945. It was introduced by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, although he did not act alone. His mission would be to “exterminate” all minorities, but most abundantly, the Jews. Based on information given by About.com, it is estimated that 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust. Six million of these were Jews.
The Holcaust was the mass murder of over ten million European 'undesireables' between 1941 and 1945 by the Nazi regime. Hitler and his Nazi's established a large number of labor and death camps throughout Nazi occupied countries. A holocaust, by definition, is a mass human slaughter caused by fire. These events Hitler authorized were categorized as a holocaust because after the prisoners in the camps died, or, if they were at a labor camp, close enough to death that they were no longer of any use to the Nazi guards stationed at the camp they were at, the guards would burn the bodies in mass.
Jewish people weren’t the only ones sent to concentration camps. People such as people with disabilities, Homosexuals, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Communists, and Socialists (Byers.p.12). Everyone that was sent to concentration camps was sent via train cars (www.historychannel.com). They had no food, water, or restrooms for up to 18 days. Many people died from the lack of food and water (Byers, p.15).
The Nazi soldiers arrested masses of male adult Jews and held them captive in camps for short periods of time. A death camp is a concentration camp designed with the intention of mass murder, using strategies such as gas chambers. Six death concentration camps existed: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka.... ... middle of paper ...
On April 19, 1943, after months of secret planning, something revolutionary occurred for Jews during the Holocaust. It was the day of the largest Jewish revolt against German-occupied Europe; the uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto. On the eve of Passover, around 750 Jewish resistance fighters stood up to the Nazi soldiers in refusal of mass deportation, an attempt to save themselves from what was thought to be the inevitable. The heavily-armed and well-trained German troops eventually defeated the resistance; this event demonstrated the dedication of the Jewish fighters to attempt to save the others during a time of life or death. The Jews initiated this uprising because it was thought to be the only option of continued life for Jews in the Ghetto,
At the end of WW2, millions had died while in the concentration camps. For five years, Nazi SS Soldiers were allowed to terrorize and kill millions of people. Most of the killing was conducted at Auschwitz. There were three camps specifically designed for a huge purpose under Auschwitz. With the new finding of Zyklon B, the extermination rate skyrocketed. Auschwitz alone was responsible for 1.1 million deaths, 960,000 of the 1.1 million were Jews. The Nazis inflicted such incredible pain for these helpless victims, before being murdered, they were brutally tortured and degraded. On January 22, 1945, the Nazi Concentration Camp, Auschwitz, was liberated by the Soviets.
When Germany invaded Poland, World War two began. During the war the Germans created the Warsaw ghetto. Jews were crammed into this and other ghettos. In ghettos there were too many people, and not enough food, space, or sanitation. The Germans also built concentration camps.
In September of 1939 German soldiers defeated Poland in only two weeks. Jews were ordered to register all family members and to move to major cities. More than 10,000 Jews from the country arrived in Krakow daily. They were moved from their homes to the "Ghetto", a walled sixteen square block area, which they were only allowed to leave to go to work.