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:

    If all would lead their lives in love like me,
    Then bloody swords and armor should not be;
    No drum nor trumpet peaceful sleeps should move,
    Unless alarm came from the camp of love.
    Thomas Campion (1567–1620)

    ... my one aim and concentrated purpose shall be and is to show that women can learn, can reason, can compete with men in the grand fields of literature and science ... that a woman can be a woman and a true one without having all her time engrossed by dress and society.
    M. Carey Thomas (1857–1935)

    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)