With the last of the bodies exhumed and cremated the SS started to dismantle the barracks, destroy the buildings, and plant trees and shrubs to disguise the mass slaughter that had taken place at Belzec.
SS-Scharführer Werner Dubois testified about the dismantling of the camp:
The transports to Belzec and, consequently, the gassing operations, stopped quite suddenly. As staff members of the Belzec camp, we were informed that the place would be re-built completely. A working group of Jews, whose size I don’t remember, was in charge of the demolition work. It is worth mentioning that at that time March–April 1943 the cremation of the corpses was terminated and the graves were levelled.
The camp was emptied entirely and levelled accordingly. I heard that some planting was done there. The Jewish work commando, after accomplishing this work, was taken to Sobibor. I remained in Belzec for two more days, together with some of my colleagues and guards, to carry out the last clearing and loading..... Some time later, when I was in Sobibor, I heard that during the transport of the Jewish work commando from Belzec to Sobibor, some mutiny and shooting took place, which led to some deaths.[129]
Fritz Tauscher testified on December 18, 1963, in a prison in Stadehelm:
After the cremations had been carried out, Commandant Hering left Belzec. Wirth then assigned me to complete the job of closing down the camp, levelling the ground and planting new shrubs. This was finished by the end of March or early April 1943. To carry out this task we had available: the remainder of the core German staff including Dubois and Jührs, the Ukrainian guards and 300 to 350 Jewish labourers.
The latter had been assured by Hering that after Belzec had closed down, they would be taken to a labor camp of their own choice, either Lublin, Trawniki or Budzyn. What happened in fact was that about 14 days before the work was fully completed Wirth, the inspector of the three extermination camps, turned up all of a sudden without warning early one morning. At the same time, a train with eight or nine wagons pulled into the camp. Wirth announced that the Jews were now going to a camp of his choice, and they all had to get into the train.[130]
The destination of this transport was the Sobibor death camp. Edward Luczynski, a local Belzec villager testified about this transport on October 15, 1945, in Belzec:
During the time of the disbandment of the camp a few transports of completely naked Jews were brought to Belzec, which were then sent on to Sobibor. These Jews came from the direction of Lwow, it was said that they came from the city of Lwow itself. Between Belzec station and Mazily, a small village about 8 kilometres NW of Belzec and the next station along the line, the naked Jews began to leap out of the wagons, but they were shot down by the Germans.
The Jews who had been chosen to work in the death camp in Belzec were, after the disbandment of the camp,put into railway wagons almost naked and brought to Sobibor. From this transport only Sylko Herc from Krakow was able to escape[131]: he came to Belzec and told me how he had saved himself. From here he went to Krakow; whether he is still alive or not, I do not know. I know that he had a wife and children in Krakow who had been hidden by a Catholic priest.[132]
One thing worthy of mention is that whilst the wooden barracks were burnt down, the fences and watch towers taken down, and the gas chambers destroyed, the sturdily built Kommandantur and the adjacent house used for the SS camp staff were returned to the Ostbahn.[133]
Edward Luczynski testified about the lengths the Germans went to in order to disguise the site:
After levelling and cleaning the area of the extermination camp, the Germans planted the area with small pines and left. At that moment, the whole area was plucked to pieces by the neighboring population, who were searching for gold and valuables. That’s why the whole surface of the camp was covered with human bones, hair, ashes from cremated corpses, dentures, pots and other objects.[134]
A special SS commission inspected the area to ensure that all traces of the mass murder had been eradicated, and the SS finally left Belzec on May 8, 1943. The SS garrison was distributed to a number of camps in the Lublin district, either to Sobibor or Treblinka, or the labor camps at Poniatowa, Dorohucza, Budzyn, or the Old Airfield camp in Lublin, which was the main sorting depot for the clothes of the Jews murdered in Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka death camps.[135]
In a number of well-regarded accounts of when the transport of Jewish workers left Belzec for Sobibor, there appears to be much confusion and conflict. Yitzhak Arad states in his book Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, on page 265, that this transport left in July 1943. Robin O’Neil, in his book Belzec—Stepping Stone to Genocide, states on page 183 that Leon Feldhendler, one of the leaders of the revolt in Sobibor, has testified that this transport from Belzec arrived on June 30, 1943, whilst Thomas Toivi Blatt, in his book Sobibor—The Forgotten Revolt, writes on page 31 that the transport from Belzec arrived on June 26, 1943.
It seems unlikely that if the SS did leave Belzec on May 8, 1943—and indeed this seems more likely as the demolition and planting work was completed in April 1943—that the Jewish workers who toiled on this project would have left two months later. It is more logical that this transport left just before the SS left Belzec in May 1943, and indeed the statement of a Sobibor survivor, Moshe Bahir, would seem to support this view:
One day in the month of May 1943, we were ordered to remain in our huts. We were not taken to work, and this aroused dark forebodings in us. In the afternoon the Bahnhofkommando (station / transport reception commando) was summoned to its usual work at the train station. When the men got to the train, a dreadful vision appeared before them. This train had brought the last of the Jews from the Belzec death camp who had been engaged in burning the bodies of those killed in the gas chambers.[136]
Odilo Globocnik, the head of Aktion Reinhardt, wrote to Heinrich Himmler proposing that a small farm should be built on the sites of all three death camps, occupied by a guard to ensure that the Polish population did not search for gold and valuables on the sites, and to provide the false perception that these former sites of mass murder were just innocent farmsteds.
A small group of 12 Ukrainians under the command of SS-Unterscharführer Karl Schiffner went to Belzec from Treblinka to build the farmhouse, and SS-Scharführer Heinrich Unverhau, from Sobibor, also came to Belzec, and testified about this visit after the war:
A few weeks before the uprising in Sobibor, I and three other SS men and a larger group of Ukrainian auxiliaries were again ordered to go to Belzec. We were doing afforestation work there ..... We had to prevent the Poles from turning the whole area upside down in their searches for gold.[137]
This work was completed at the end of October 1943, the SS vacated the site, and a former Ukrainian Volksdeutscher member of the camp personnel settled into the farm with his family.[138]