This chapter is an attempt to record some of the names of Jewish survivors and victims who set foot on the living hell that was Belzec death camp. What has been created is not an impersonal statistic, but an attempt to show that these people were flesh and blood, and to honor their memory.
Where possible where surnames and some personal details are known, these have been included but are painfully aware that there are many more names, and many more accounts are unknown, so this roll of remembrance will never be complete. This list does not claim be a definitive one—that will probably never be achieved. The Germans did not make transport lists of names of Polish Jews, but comprehensive records exist in the case of the German Jews deported from the Reich.
We have relied on information according to a number of sources, victims databases on reputed websites, books, survivor accounts, and personal correspondence. This information is respectfully presented, and hopefully the memory has been preserved, in an accurate and fitting manner. Firstly, we will cover the survivors / escapees, and then those who were selected at Belzec to work in other camps, and, finally, the victims. All the names shown are in alphabetical order, surname first then, where known, forenames.
Rudolf Reder, in his book Belzec, was able to devote one paragraph to his fellow inmates who endured the hell called Belzec, and he wrote this:
We moved around like people who had no will anymore. We were one mass. I know a few names, but not many. Who was who and what their names were, in any case, were matters of complete indifference. I know that the physician was a young doctor from somewhere near Przemysl, he was called Jakubowicz. I also met a merchant from Krakow, Schlüssl, and his son, and a Czech Jew named Ellenbogen, who was said to have a bicycle warehouse, and a chef, Goldschmidt, who’d been well known at the Brüder Hanicka restaurant in Karlsbad. No one took any interest in anyone else. We went mechanically through the motions of that horrible life.[139]
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ASTMAN, Mina. Deported from the Zolkiew ghetto in the Galician district at the end of March 1942. Escaped from the camp along with Malka Talenfeld. They returned to Zolkiew and their story was recorded. Her fate is unknown but it is likely she did not survive.
BACHNER. A dentist from Krakow. Arrived in the camp with the last transports from Krakow at the begining of October 1942. When the transport reached the camp, he succeded in entering a latrine and hid there for a few days. One night he was able to leave the latrine pit and escaped from the camp. He returned to Krakow, but his eventual fate is unknown. He told his story to Tadeusz Pankiewicz in Krakow.
HERC, Sylko. Sylko and his father (first name unknown), were both deported from Krakow to Belzec. A member of the Jewish work brigade that dismantled the camp and was put on a train in May 1943, bound for Sobibor death camp. He escaped along with Chaim Hirszman and returned to Belzec village where he spoke to Edward Luczynski about the escape. He returned to Krakow but his eventual fate is not known.
HIRSZMAN, Chaim. Born on October 24, 1912, in Janow Lubelski. He was a mechanic and metal worker by profession and lived in Janow Lubelski during the occupation. In September 1942 Chaim, his wife, and 6-month-old child went to Zaklikow, from where they were deported to Belzec. They were both murdered on arrival, but Chaim was selected to work.
Chaim was part of the Jewish work brigade who dismantled the camp and put on a train to the Sobibor death camp in May 1943. He escaped from the death train along with Sylko Herc and managed to join a partisan group in the forests near Janow Lubelski. He fought bravely, murdering 29 Germans, and was awarded the Grunwald Cross.
He gave evidence to the Jewish Historical District Commission on March 19, 1946, and that same evening he was murdered by two or three men from the Narodowe Sily Zbrojne (NSZ, National Armed Force) group in Lublin. Chaim maried Pola, who also testified after his murder on what he had told her of his experiences in Belzec.
REDER, Rudolf. Born on April 4, 1881, in Lvov. He lived in Lvov and was by profession a chemist in the soap industry. He was deported to Belzec from Lvov on August 16, 1942. He worked in the “death brigade,” clearing the gas chambers and digging mass graves.
He managed to escape from Lvov after being sent there by Fritz Jirmann at the end of November 1942, and hid with his landlady until Lvov was liberated by the Red Army.
Reder lived in Krakow and wrote his memoirs in 1946—the only account by a survivor of Belzec, and then emigrated to Toronto, Canada, changing his name to Roman Robak. He attended the Belzec trial of Josef Oberhauser, in Munich; Oberhauser was the only member of the SS garrison to stand trial for the crimes committed at Belzec.
SAND, Jozef. Born in 1924. He was a student of the Jewish Gimnazjum in Lvov. Joseph Rebhun, in his account Leap for Life, recalls:
On a sunny morning in the ghetto, I suddenly encounter someone, Josef Sand, whom I have not seen for years. He adds some information that is so incredible I do not mention it to anyone in the ghetto, so as not to be considered certifiably crazy. Sand tells me that he ran away from Belzec. I have no clear idea how he escaped. He had been taken there as a member of a small group separated from the one thousand taken from the Janowska camp.
In Belzec, he claimed, he had helped to build showers through which poisonous gas could be piped in for the trapped Jews; the showers kill thousands each day. He swears to me that he is telling the truth, but it is impossible to believe what I hear. He looks normal to me, and yet his story is incredible. I ask him what he intends to do now. To leave the ghetto as soon as possible, he says; he just came to find out about his family. I never see him or hear about him again.
SHAPIRO, Isaac. He was a rabbi from Lvov, who was deported to Belzec in October 1942. He worked in the Jewish “sorting brigade,” shifting through the clothes and possessions of the Jews murdered in the gas chambers. He escaped in the cattle wagons taking away the clothes for distribution to the Reich.
SZMIRER. A Jew called Podgorski, a survivor from the Lublin ghetto, met Mr. Szmirer, a 21-year-old man, somewhere on a ghetto street. Szmirer was the son of a well-known furniture merchant from Lublin, and he said he had been deported to Belzec during the Aktion in March 1942.
Szmirer informed him that he had escaped from Belzec hidden under the clothes of the gassed victims on a freight train that had returned to Lublin. Back in Lublin, Szmirer had informed some members of the Jewish Council about his experiences, though it would appear that not many people believed him. His eventual fate is unknown, but it is likely he perished during the final liquidation of the Lublin ghetto on November 9, 1942.
Whilst undoubtedly there were more escapes from Belzec, this incredibly low number shows just how efficient at mass murder Belzec was, although it is recognized that it was very primitive in construction. Franz Suchomel, in an interview with Claude Lanzman for his film Shoah, had this to say about Belzec:
Belzec was the laboratory. Wirth was camp commandant. He tried everything imaginable there. He got off on the wrong foot. The pits were overflowing and the cesspool seeped out in front of the SS mess hall. It stank—in front of the mess hall, in front of their barracks.
.... Wirth with his own men—with Franz, with Oberhauser and Hackenholt—he tried everything there. Those three had to put the bodies in the pits themselves, so that Wirth could see how much space he néeded. And when they rebelled—Franz refused—Wirth beat Franz with a whip. He whipped Hackenholt too..... Kurt Franz. That’s how Wirth was. Then, with that experience behind him, he came to Treblinka.[140] [141]
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