The Silence Afterwards

Belzec was a Nazi extermination camp in Poland where approximately 500,000 Jews were killed. The only survivor, Rudolf Rieder, described the horrifying events that took place there. People without permits were forcibly removed from their homes, beaten, and transported to the camp. They were packed into trucks and taken to the gas chambers, where they were killed. The bodies were then disposed of in pits. Rieder witnessed the atrocities and the silence that followed. The camp operated from 1942-43 and was solely dedicated to the murder of Jews. the silence afterwards. Belzec, in the far southeastern corner of Poland, was the first of three Nazi extermination camps created as part of Aktion Reinhardt. It operated between 1942-43 and consumed the lives of approximately 500,000 victims, overwhelmingly Jews. Visiting the memorial today, it is almost impossible to understand what took place here. Precise architecture saturates history and denies one a true, blinding sense of place. In this thought-photo essay I have juxtaposed the words of its only survivor, Rudolf Rieder, with my images in the hope of making sense, creating unease and unfolding the tragedy that took place here. From the testimony of Rudolf Rieder. Meanwhile, for a few consecutive days, German patrols combed one house after another, looking into every nook and cranny. Some of those caught by the Gestapo had their permits honored, others did not. All those without permits, or whose permits the Germans did not honor, were driven out of their houses without food or clothing. They found me hiding in a corner, beat me on the head with a stick, and took me away. They squeezed us like sardines into trams and transported us to the Janowska camp. We could neither move nor breathe. Night was already falling. All 6,000 of us were squeezed into a meadow. We were ordered to sit down, and forbidden to move, raise an arm, stretch a leg, or get up. A watchtower directed its blinding light at us. It became as light as if it were day. We sat there, packed tightly together, young and old, women and children alike. A few well-aimed shots were fired in our direction. Someone got up and was shot on the spot. Perhaps he wished to die a quick death. And so we passed the night. The crowd was deathly silent. Not even women or children dared to cry. At six o'clock in the morning we were told to get up off the wet grass, on which we had been sitting all night, and to arrange ourselves in a column, for an arow. Our column was guarded on both sides by the Gestapo and Ukrainian police. The Germans began to load the train. They opened the doors to each truck. On both sides of the doors stood the Gestapo men, two on each side, whips in hand, slashing each of us on our faces and heads. All the Gestapo men were alike. They all beat us so badly that each of us had marks on our faces or bumps on our heads. Women sobbed, children in arms cried. Thus driven along and beaten mercilessly, we climbed on top of one another. The doors to the trucks were high above the ground. In the general scramble we trampled those who were below. We were all in a hurry, wanting to have all this behind us. On the roof of each truck sat a Gestapo man with a machine gun. Others beat us while counting 100 people to each car. It all went so fast that loading a few thousand people took no more than an hour. We knew that we were being taken to our deaths and that we couldn't do anything about it. Although all our thoughts were occupied with escape, we saw no possibility of success. No one said a word to anyone else, no one tried to console lamenting women or to calm crying children. We all knew one thing, that we were going towards a certain and terrible death. What we all wished for was that it would be quick. About midday the train pulled into Belzec. It was a small station surrounded by little houses occupied by the Gestapo. Next to the station stood a post office and the lodgings of the Ukrainian railway men. Belzec is on the line between Lublin and Tomashev, 15 kilometers from Rava Ruska. At Belzec our train left the main line and moved on to sidings about a kilometer long, which led directly into the camp. At the main station in Belzec an old German with a thick black mustache mounted the engine. I do not know his name, but I would recognize him at a glance. He looked like a butcher. He took charge of the train, bringing it into the camp. The German who brought the train climbed down from the engine in order to help. With shouts and kicks he drove people out of the trucks. When the whole train was empty and checked, he signaled with a flag and moved the train away from the camp. Several dozen SS men yelling faster opened the trucks, chasing people out with whips and rifle butts. The doors were about a meter from the ground and the people, young and old alike, had to jump down, often breaking arms or legs. Children were injured and all tumbled down exhausted, terrified and filthy. The SS men were assisted by the so-called platform commando, who supervised the Jewish death commando. They were dressed in everyday clothing without any distinctive marking. The sick, the old and small children, in other words, all those who could not walk on their own, were thrown onto stretchers and taken to pits. There they were made to sit on the edge, while one of the Gestapo shot them and pushed their bodies into the pit with a rifle butt. There was deathly silence. The Gestapo stood close to the crowd. Everybody wanted to hear them. We all suddenly hoped that, if we were spoken to, then perhaps it meant that there would be work to do, that we would live after all. The SS spoke loudly and clearly, you will be bathed, then you will go to work. That was all. The crowd rejoiced, the people were relieved that they would be going to work. They applauded. The crowd was peaceful. And in silence they all went forward, men straight across the courtyard to a building bearing the inscription baths and inhalation, in large letters. I saw that when they were handed wooden stools and ordered first to stand in a line and then to sit down, and when eight Jewish barbers, silent as death, came in to shave their hair to the bare skin, it was at this moment that they were struck by the terrible truth. It was then that neither the women nor the men, already on their way to the gas, could have had any illusions about their fate, with the exception of a few men chosen for their trade, which could be handy in the camp, all the rest, young and old, women and children, went to certain death. Little girls with long hair had it shaved, others with short hair went to the gas chambers directly, together with the men. And all of a sudden, without any transition from hope, they were overcome by despair. There were cries and shrieking. Some women went mad. A dozen or so SS men drove the women along with whips and fixed bayonets all the way to the building and from there up three steps to a hall. There the Ukrainian guards counted 750 people for each gas chamber. Those women who tried to resist were bayoneted until the blood was running. Eventually all the women were forced into the chambers. I heard the doors being shut, I heard shrieks and cries, I heard desperate calls for help in Polish and in Yiddish. I heard the blood-curdling wails of women and the squeals of children, which after a short time became one long, horrifying scream. This went on for 15 minutes. The engine worked for 20 minutes. Afterwards there was total silence. Then the guards pushed open the doors that led outside. It was then that those of us who had been selected from different transports, in unmarked clothing and without tattoos, began our work. We pulled out the corpses of the people so recently alive. We dragged them to pits with the help of leather straps while an orchestra played from morning until night. The camp was surrounded by dense forest of young pine. Although the forestation was thick, extra branches were cut and interwoven with the existing ones over the gas chambers to allow a minimum of light to penetrate. Behind the gas chambers was a sandy lane along which we dragged the corpses. Overhead the Germans had put wire netting interwoven with more branches.On a wall opposite the entrance to each gas chamber were more sliding doors two meters wide. Through these the corpses of the gassed were thrown outside. On one side of the building was an adjoining shed no bigger than two meters square. This housed the engine, which was petrol driven. The gas chambers were about a meter and a half above ground level. The doors leading to the ramp, onto which the bodies of the victims were thrown, were on a level with the gas chambers. I stayed in Belzec death camp from August until the end of November. This was a period which saw the gassing of Jews on a massive scale. I was told by some of the inmates who had managed to survive from earlier transports that the vast majority of the death convoys came during this precise period. They were coming each and every day without respite. Usually they arrived three times a day. Each convoy was composed of 50 cattle trucks, each truck containing 100 people. If a transport happened to come during the night, the victims were kept in locked cars until six in the morning. The average death toll was 10,000 people a day. Some days the transports were not only larger, but even more frequent. Jews were brought in from everywhere, no one else, only Jews. I never saw anybody else. Belzec served no other purpose but that of murdering Jews. Afterwards the engine was turned off. The doors leading from the gas chambers onto the ramp were then opened. Bodies were thrown out onto the ground in one enormous pile a few meters high. The workers who opened the doors took no precautionary measures. The calls for help, shrieks, and terrible moans of people locked in and slowly asphyxiated lasted between 10 and 15 minutes. Horribly loud at first, they grew weaker and weaker until there was complete silence. I had desperate cries in many different languages. They were all gassed. When, after 20 minutes of gassing, the guards pushed open the tightly shut doors, the dead were in an upright position. Their faces were not blue. They looked almost unchanged, as if asleep. There was a bit of blood here and there from bare-knit wounds. Their mouth was slightly open, hands rigid, often pressed against their chests.