Belzec Extermination Camp - Concealment of Camp's Purpose From Victims

Concealment of Camp's Purpose From Victims

The wooden gas chambers were disguised as the barracks and showers of a labor camp, so that the victims would not realize the true purpose of the site, and the process was conducted as quickly as possible: people were forced to run from the trains to the gas chambers, leaving them no time to absorb where they were or to plan a revolt. Finally, a handful of Jews were selected to perform all the manual work involved with extermination (removing the bodies from the gas chambers, burying them, sorting and repairing the victims' clothing, etc.). The extermination process itself was conducted by Hackenholt, guards, and a Jewish aide. The Jewish Sonderkommandos were killed periodically and replaced by new arrivals, so that they would neither organize a revolt nor survive to tell about the camp.

Read more about this topic:  Belzec Extermination Camp

Famous quotes containing the words camp, purpose and/or victims:

    Some of the taverns on this road, which were particularly dirty, were plainly in a transition state from the camp to the house.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching Man to regard himself as an experiment in the realization of God, to regard his hands as God’s hand, his brain as God’s brain, his purpose as God’s purpose. He must regard God as a helpless Longing, which longed him into existence by its desperate need for an executive organ.
    George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)

    Alas! regardless of their doom,
    The little victims play!
    No sense have they of ills to come
    Nor care beyond today.
    Thomas Gray (1716–1771)