Posted on 12/09/2013 4:05:44 PM PST by Former Fetus
I wanted to go to Belzec (pronounced Biwzhets) because no one really does. One million Jews died there in the span of nine months - and hardly anyone knows about it. I felt it was a pilgrimage to a holy site: the second largest (after Treblinka) Jewish graveyard in history.
Mike Tregenza was my guide. He is a non-Jewish, English historian who lectures at Lublin university. According to Sir Martin Gilbert, he is the world expert on Belzec.
Belzec is a sleepy little hamlet in southeast Poland. A few thousand people live there. All seem to be related in some way. We stopped for a drink in a bar and the natives seemed unfriendly enough. All in all, it's a pretty innocuous place. One would never guess that of the million Jews who arrived there in 1942, only two survived.
Mike told me that he interviewed the station-master who worked at Belzec during the war. On every cattle car that arrived, there was written a number; the number of "pieces" (as the Germans would say) contained therein. He kept a tally. When he reached seven figures, he could no longer continue.
Belzec was a part of "Operation Reinhardt." Its purpose, which was accomplished, was to destroy the Jewish communities of Eastern Poland - specifically the main centers of Warsaw, Lublin, Cracow and Lvov.
Operation Reinhardt began in March 1942 with the construction of Belzec and ended in August 1943 with the destruction of Treblinka. It utilised three camps: Treblinka in the north, Sobibor and Belzec in the south. It was masterminded by Sturmbahnfuhrer Christian Wirth and Belzec was his prototype " his baby.
(Excerpt) Read more at virtualjerusalem.com ...
Quite. The little pee-pants paperhanger shot his pregnant airhead plaything, then shot himself, and Goebbels did the same thing with his wife and family and himself the next day. Goering took poison in his cell sometime during his trial — it was slipped to him by a sympathizer, or some German employee at the facility. Himmler was captured by the Red Army, his interrogators didn’t quite believe his phony ID papers, and finally he got tired of the questioning, said, “I am Heinrich Himmler,” and bit the capsule to kill himself. The mayor of a town near one of the death camps and his wife, were forced with others to tour the camps with their dead, dying, and starving inmates, and he and his wife killed themselves when they returned home. And the Red Army occupation was so horrible that many ordinary Germans killed themselves rather than live under it. I’m reminded of the line from an old Genesis song, “death is easy as a substitute for pride.”
Thanks Lx.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/goering.html
> In 2013, as the 68th anniversary of the Allied victory over Japan Day (a.k.a. V-J Day) approached, Goering’s personal vehicle was found in North Carolina. The one-of-a-kind 540K Kabriolet B Mercedes had been sitting in a garage since the 1950s. It was personally commissioned by Goering in 1941 and the last of its kind ever built. The Florida group High Velocity Classics acquired the vehicle and will ensure that this piece of history, celebrating the Allied victory over dictatorship in Europe, will be able to be appreciated by generations to come.
I met a survivor, a Dutch Jew. He escaped and joined the American army.
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