Belzec

The last stop on our daytrip to the countryside was Belzec, the site of the concentration camp during the Second World War. In March 1942, the Nazis instituted Operation Reinhard, the plan to exterminate Poland's Jews. Hundreds of thousands of Jews in German-occupied Poland were transported to Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka camps where they were immediately murdered and buried in mass graves. 

The camp functioned until the end of 1942 and dismantled by the Nazis in 1943. A manor house was built and trees and crops were planted in the attempt to disguise the atrocity. In the summer of 1944 the Belzec region was occupied by the Red Army and shortly after the liberation the local villagers demolished the farm. The Belzec memorial site was founded in 2004 with the support of the U.S. Holocaust Museum.