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:
“Usually the scenery about them is drear and savage enough; and the loggers camp is as completely in the woods as a fungus at the foot of a pine in a swamp; no outlook but to the sky overhead; no more clearing than is made by cutting down the trees of which it is built, and those which are necessary for fuel.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“A major misunderstanding of child rearing has been the idea that meeting a childs needs is an end in itself, for the purpose of the childs mental health. Mothers have not understood that this is but one step in social development, the goal of which is to help a child begin to consider others. As a result, they often have not considered their children but have instead allowed their childrens reality to take precedence, out of a fear of damaging them emotionally.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“Alas! regardless of their doom
The little victims play;”
—Thomas Gray (17161771)