Belzec Concentration Camp Essay

85 years ago, over a 12 year period, nearly six million Jews were killed in a genocide called The Holocaust. The Holocaust was led by the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler was their leader. The mass murders took place at concentration camps throughout Europe. The majority of concentration camps resided in Poland and Germany. Many people believe there were only a few concentration camps. “However, researchers found that the Nazis had actually established 20,000 camps between 1933 and 1945” (“How Many Camps,” n.d.). In this paper I will be discussing the largest concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Why was the Concentration camp Belzec so small? Because the town of Belzec was very small so they had very limited space for building, Also they had only 1,220 yards of space and got split into two sections. They started to built it by the Bug (buh) river in 1941, It also got surrounded by barbed wire fences. It is found in southeastern Poland between Zamosc and Lvov. It was also known for being a killing Center And held 2,000-2,500 people, And kill about 600,000 Jews.

Some tried to escape from the Germans. While inside the Warsaw concentration camp, some Jews were deported in 1940. "During 1940 approximately 11,000 Jews were sent to labour camps in Warsaw, Lublin and Krakow, some were faked to Belzec labour camps, building fortifications on the soviet border" ("The Warsaw Ghetto").

After hour upon hours of a train ride trapped in a dark, confined room, packed with people, only being to eat tiny rations and no toilet, what awaited the Jews was an even worse fate. Death Camps. Chelmno , Belzec,

When the corpses were deprived of valuables, they were incinerated in pits, on pyres or in large crematoriums. Crematorium II, the biggest in Auschwitz, was capable of incinerating over 1,400 bodies a day. Altogether, the four crematoria could incinerate 4,416 people a day, and over 1,600,000 individuals were cremated per year.

Each part had a specific task for its prisoners. Buna, the main work camp supplied hundreds of workers for construction jobs as well as factory labor. Buna was the third and final camp that was built. The prisoners worked in the Petro-Chemical Corporation I.G. Farben factory. There they made synthetic rubber and fuel. Before the factory was built, the Nazis had the prisoners clear the land and make it suitable for the factory’s construction. The land prior to the clearing was an open marsh which later lead to many diseases being spread by the prisoners throughout the camp. This lead to very high casualties, especially the cold winter months. The second part of the concentration camp that was built was Birkenau. The intention of the Birkenau concentration camp was to be a prison. In Birkenau, the Nazis held prisoners of war from when they invaded the Soviet Union. Within the prison, the people staying there as prisoners were punished in numerous ways. They were tortured for data on the war, they were selected, if fit, to take part in painful medical experiments by Doctor Josef Mengele. The most infamous part of the Auschwitz compound was the kill camp, Auschwitz. Auschwitz was a repurposed Austro-Hungarian artillery barrack. All the camps had casualties, but Auschwitz main goal was to exterminate its population. Anyone unfit to work was sent to Auschwitz to be killed. These were usually the elderly, young children, and women not fit for working. They were killed in gas chambers designed and built by the Nazis. The chambers would kill by releasing Zyklon B into the air, which then suffocated and killed people in an average time of fifteen minutes. Zyklon B is an insecticide which means it is used to kill insects, but it is so potent that when oxidized it can even kill humans. Then to dispose of the

The extermination and slave labor camp known as Belzec was indeed a nightmare to those who were held within its walls. Not only were the living conditions of the camp unbearable, but it was also very deadly. By closely examining Belzec, one gains an understanding of the horrors that occurred during the Holocaust. Many Jewish people died in Belzec, and the living conditions that they were forced to endure were intolerable and inhumane. Many innocent people suffered under the ruthless and cruel conditions in the extermination camp Belzec. Originally a slave labor camp, Belzec was located in South East Poland. It was said that the camp was responsible for the killing and murdering of 600,000 people. Some were Roma, but the majority of deaths

There really is no possible way to determine the exact number of people who suffered and lost their lives in the camps because not all people who arrived were registered as inmates. Instead, they were immediately sent to the Zyklon B gas chambers or killed (Auschwitz). These torture sites were established in the late 1940s and did not end until 1944-1945 (Auschwitz-Birkenau- “The).

Women and children were beat and men were murdered and rounded up to go to concentration camps. These attacks came after Herschel Grynszpan shot a member of the German Embassy. In two days, over 250 synagogues we burned, 7,000 Jewish businesses were looted and dozens of Jewish people were killed.

-Glenn Meade What would you do if you were drug out of your home, put in a camp and forced to either work or die? What would your life be like? In concentration camps, even the slightest disobeying of the very strict rules could get a prisoner killed, or tortured. Even the children were punished, and sometimes for no reason at all. The everyday routine in these prisons was hard and brutal, with severe suffering every day.

The questions asked will never be answered. There is no answer. There was a cause, thought to hold the upmost importance. That’s it. The purpose was to kill off the “evil” living, polluting, tainting the pure. It’s that simple, that meaningless. These monsters created their zones of destruction and rooms of termination. The process was set in motion. Camps sprung up, deaths skyrocketed, and everything seemed to shift. Nameless faces were lost, their stories buried, their day of salvation never seized. Belzec is just another example, another prison, another marker of where time stood still and genocide was born. Information, conditions, figures, incidents, and end are all variables of what a camp looks like. Let this be a lesson on how the right amount of elements put in the right situation can cause such a lethal

The conditions of the camp were unbearable. The prisoners were barely fed, mainly bread and water, and were cramped in small sleeping arrangements. "Hundreds slept in triple-tiered rows of bunks (Adler 51)." In the quarters that they stayed, there were no adequate cleaning facilities or restrooms for the prisoners. They rarely were able to change clothes which meant the "clothes were always infested with lice (Swiebocka 18)." Those were sick went to the infirmary where also there were eventually killed in the gas chambers or a lethal injection. The Germans did not want to have anyone not capable of hard work to live. Prisoners were also harshly punished for small things such as taking food or "relieving themselves during work hours (Swiebocka 19)." The biggest punishment was execution. The most common punishment was to receive lashings with a whip.

Most women and children were murdered on arrival, however those that had somehow made it into the camp and by some odd miracle were able to give birth were only allowed to spend seconds with their children before the guards ripped the newborns away and disposed of the infants.. Certain prisoners were then selected by SS Doctors to undergo gruesome and agonising experiments with radiation, forced hypothermia, being frozen to death, being dissected alive, and sterilization. The ones selected only wished for a quick death, the doctors did not comply. Only 10% of the Jews brought in on the trains even lived to see the inside of the camp, most were immediately sent to gas (Zyklon B) chambers disguised as showers. Those that made it in the camp believed that the 90% were the lucky ones.

Anti-semitism in Germany led by Adolf Hitler would back up a plan called the final solution, to exterminate all of the Jews in Europe. Out of the 100 million Jews aimed for extermination, 6 million of them were killed. On his path to German greatness, Jews became victim to inconceivable actions. First the Nuremberg Laws were passed which stripped Jews of their german citizenship, eliminating their opportunity to flee to other countries. After Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, Hitler forcefully deported Jewish people into fenced confinements called ghettos. More Jews died here than in any extermination camp due to the harsh conditions and labor. Most people living in ghettos had no access to running water or a sewage system and overcrowding

The words inscribed above the Auschwitz concentration camp read; "Arbeit Macht Frei,” meaning, “work brings freedom.” These deceiving words gave unsuspecting prisoners hope that they could get out of the most destructive concentration camp during the entire Holocaust. This concentration camp would kill over one million people. Auschwitz will be fully analyzed, starting with the early stages of Auschwitz, then the Jews and the horrors of Auschwitz, and finally the final days of Auschwitz. The events that took place at Auschwitz concentration camp were horrifying and led to the death of millions.