Page 40 - Witness: Passing the Torch of Holocaust Memory to New Generations

Operation Reinhard, the code name given to the Nazi “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” was the plan to murder all Jews within their General Government territory of Poland. Operation Reinhard marked the most deadly phase of the Holocaust with the introduction of extermination camps Bełzec, Sobibór, and Treblinka. More than 1.5 million people, virtually all of whom were Jews, were murdered at these sites between December 1941 and November 1943.
Belzec, the first of the extermina- tion camps built, was situated about a kilometer south of the local Belzec railroad station in the Lublin district of Poland, and operated from March
17, 1942, to the end of December 1942. The Nazis razed the camp in an effort to erase all evidence of the extermination center’s existence. In
constructing the Belzec memorial, completed in 2004, forensic scientists determined the layout of the original camp and the most appropriate layout for a memorial. The pathway shown at right is thought to be the original camp road, since it was the only earth devoid of human remains.
32
BELZEC