Birnbaum

Vernichtungslager Belzec
Sonderkommando Belzec der Waffen-SS
מחנה ההשמדה בלז'ץ

At least 434,500 Jews were killed at Bełżec, along with an unknown number of Poles and Roma.
Only two Jews are known to have survived Bełżec: Rudolf Reder and Chaim Hirszman.

In April, 1940, Belzec extermination camp, the model for two others in the 'Aktion Reinhard' murder program, started as a labor camp, after the abandonment of the plan to enlarge the Lublin reservation in the same area.
On October 13, 1941, Heinrich Himmler gave SS and Police Leader Lublin, SS Brigadefuehrer Odilo Globocnik, two orders:
Start Germanizing the area around Zamość
Start work on the first extermination camp in the General Government near Bełżec.
The site was chosen for three reasons:
1. it was situated at the border between the districts Lublin and Galicia, indicating its purpose to serve as a killing site for the Jews of both districts;
2. for transport, it lay next to the railroad and the main road between Lublin and Lvov;
3. the northern boundary of the planned death camp was the anti-tank ditch dug a year before by Jewish slave workers of the former forced labour camp.
The ditch, originally excavated for military reasons, was to serve as the first mass grave.
In early November, 1941, Globocnik's construction expert SS Obersturmfuehrer Richard Thomalla started work using Polish villagers,
Globocnik's Trawniki men and, later, Jewish slave workers.
The installation was finished by early March 1942.[