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Shofar FTP Archive File: camps/aktion.reinhard/belzec//belzec.gas


Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Holocaust Almanac: The Gas Chambers of Belzec
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: Belzec,Chelmno,Eichmann,gas,Wirth

Archive/File: holocaust/poland/reinhard/belzec belzec.gas
Last-modified: 1993/03/05

"Before coming to Belzec, Wirth <*> became acquainted with the gas vans in
operation in Chelmno and ... learned their advantages and
disadvantages. This experience in euthanasia, where permanent gas
chambers had existed, and with the gas vans inspired his solution. He
decided to combine in Belzec the permanent gas chamber with the
internal combustion car engine as gas supplier. Wirth objected to the
bottles of carbon monoxide gas that had been used in euthanasia
institutions. The bottles, which were produced in private factories
and which would be supplied to Belzec in large quantities, could
arouse suspicion. ... Wirth preferred to set up a self-contained
extermination system, based on an ordinary car engine and easily
available gasoline and not dependent on supply by outside factors." <1>

(For a lengthy description of the construction process, see Arad, p25)

"Adolf Eichmann, who visited Belzec. at that time and saw the gas
chambers, wrote:

	...at the turn of the year 1941/42, the chief of the
	Security Police and SD Heydrich told me ... "I come from
	the Reichsfuhrer; the Fuhrer has now ordered the physical
	extermination of the Jews." He informed me further that 
	the Reichsfuhrer had instructed Globocnik, the SS and
	Police Leader of Lublin, to use the Soviet antitank ditches
	for the mass annihilation of the Jews. I myself should
	travel there and submit to him a report about the
	implementation of the operation.... I traveled in the 
	direction of Lublin; I don't know what the place is called.
	A Hauptsturmfuhrer accompanied me. I met there a Hauptmann
	of the Order Police [Wirth]. I expressed astonishment that
	the small house, completely secluded, was built, and he 
	told me: "Here the Jews are being gassed now." <2>

"With the beginning of the deportations from Cracow district and the
deportations from the Lvov and Lublin districts, it was clear to Wirth
that the three wooden gas chambers in Belzec would no longer be
sufficient to hold the increased numbers of Jews arriving in the
transports. New, larger gas chambers would have to be built. To
facilitate construction, the deportations to Belzec were stopped
temporarily in the middle of June 1942. ... The first stage of the
Belzec operation was terminated. ...about 93,000 Jews had been
murdered in Belzec." <3>

<1> Nuremberg Documents, PS-1553, statement by Gerstein; Raul Hilberg, pp.
    571-572 (The Destruction of the European Jews, Chicago, 1967)

<2> "Ich, Adolf Eichmann, Ein Historischer Zeugenbericht" Leoni am
    Starnberger See, 1980, pp. 178-179.

<3> BELZEC, SOBIBOR, TREBLINKA p73

Excerpted from....----------------------------------------------
BELZEC, SOBIBOR, TREBLINKA - the Operation Reinhard Death Camps
Indiana University Press - Yitzhak Arad, 1987. ISBN 0-253-3429-7
----------------------------------------------------------------

<*> Christian Wirth was killed by partisans, near Trieste, in May of 1944.

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