Probably even before the Germans occupied Belzec, most of the local Jews fled to the Soviet-occupied territories, a few hid in the village.In 1940. The Germans established a labor camp in Belzec, to which they deported several thousand Jews from the General Government and Roma and Sinti from Poland and Germany. Prisoners built an anti-tank ditch on the border of the occupation zones of the Third Reich and the Soviet Union.Parts of it have survived to this day.In November 1941, the Germans began construction of a prototype extermination camp. The choice of site was determined primarily by the favorable location of the village at the confluence of railroads from the west, east and south.From March to December 1942. brought to the camp and killed approx. 450,000 Jews from Poland (from the Kraków, Lublin, Radom and Galicia districts) and abroad (including Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Germany), who ended up here through ghettos in the Lublin region, as well as through Kraków, Lviv and other locations. Small groups of Roma, Sinti and Poles were also murdered in the camp.The victims were killed with exhaust gases in primitive chambers, and their bodies were buried in mass graves. From November 1942. By April 1943. Graves were dug up and corpses were burned on grates made from railroad tracks. In the following months, the Germans dismantled the camp facilities, leveled the area and reforested it.The last camp inmates were sent to Sobibor. There were only three survivors of the camp who gave accounts of it after the war. After the war, Belzec, which was the third extermination camp (after Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka) in terms of the number of dead (at least 430,000, according to the latest research), remained forgotten. In the 1960s, its area was partially fenced, a forester's lodge was built in place of the ramp, and a sawmill operated on part of the camp site.In 1963. The first memorial to the victims was unveiled. Between 2002 and 2004, the Museum-Memorial Site, a branch of the State Museum at Majdanek in Lublin, was established. Thanks to the support of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, the American Jewish Committee and the Council for the Protection of the Remembrance of Combat and Martyrdom, a comprehensive field and archaeological survey was carried out (1997-2000), thanks to which the actual boundaries of the camp were established. In 2004. A new monument has been completed - by Andrzej Sołyga, Zdzisław Pidek and Marcin Roszczyk. The central part of the site is an area strewn with cinders, with the sites of mass graves marked, bordered by a concrete road with the names of approx. 400 villages from which Jews deported to Belzec came.Part of the establishment is also the museum building, where the multimedia educational exhibition "Belzec - death camp" is presented. The exhibition presents the history of the extermination camp and an overview of the policy of exterminating Jews in the General Government. In addition to photographs and oral accounts, it presents objects from the camp found during archaeological research.
Museum - Memorial in Belzec (4 Camp Victims Street) - tel. (84) 665 25 10, e-mail: muzeum@belzec.eu, www.belzec.eu Open: April-November daily, hrs. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. (except Mondays and public holidays), monument area hrs. 9 a.m.-6 p.m., November-March - Museum and Monument, daily hours. 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. (except Mondays and public holidays). Entrance to the museum (monument and exhibition) is free.According to the Order of the Ministry of Education, children under 14 years of age are prohibited from entering museums of martyrdom. Students should visit the museum under adult supervision.
