Translation:
In the autumn of 1941 the SS sonderkommando began the construction of an
extermination camp in Belzec for the Jewish people.
In mid-March 1942 the first the first transports arrived with Jews from
Lublin and Lwow.
The camp was placed on an area measuring 7 ha. It was connected with the
station, the side-track and the unloading ramp. It was surrounded by a
barbed wire fence.
Some 10 barracks were built as well as a death chamber.
The camp was divided into two parts, the economical-administrative one :
barracks for the camp guards and separate ones for the commando workers,
stores for the robbed property, an undressing room, a "hairdresserīs room",
and other buildings.
The second part was the extermination part: it consisted of a building with
gas chambers and ditches meant to use as mass graves.
In three corners of the camp area and in the centre of of it watch towers
were placed with reflectors, and the one in the centre had a heavy machine
gun.
Next to the station, across the side-track, an entrance gate was made. By
the left to it was a guardhouse.
The death chambers were placed behind the central group of trees, on the
left side of the undressing barracks, a little away from it was the barracks
where womenīs hair was cut off.
Beside the undressing barracks was a little yard surrounded by a fence of
planks. The fence showed the way to the gas chambers.
From March to December 1942 Jews from Poland and other countries were
deported to Belzec.
The newcomers were directed to the undressing room, then they were forced to
enter the gas chamber naked, where they were killed by means of exhaust gas.
The corpses were buried in the ditches, and from the autumn of 1942 they
were burned in pits.
In mid-1943 the Nazis closed the camp and the traces of the crimes were
obliterated, the area levelled and treees planted on it.
Belzec became an unusual graveyard in the Europe of the 20. century.
Here the Nazis murdered over 550 thousand of Polish citizens of Jewish
origin, and Jews from Austria, Belgium, Tjekkoslovakia, Denmark, Holland,
Germany, Norway, Romania, Hungary and the Soviet Union.
The victims of the genocide were adult and elderly men and women, children
and infants.
In general, in Belzec the Nazis murdered approx. 600 thousand human beings,
among them 1500 Poles who helped Jews in hiding.