EXTERMINATION CAMP IN BEŁŻEC IN ACCOUNTS OF SURVIVORS AND TESTIMONIES

This book is more than just a collection of documents compiled by two respected historians. It is a report from a place where a mass crime was committed. We observe this process from different points of view. Of the 450,000 Jews brought from Europe to the German extermination camp in Bełżec, two survived - the soap factory owner from Lviv, who was ordered to preserve the tank engine used for killing, and the tinsmith from Janów Lubelski, who had to pull the victims out of the gas chambers with a leather strap, including the dead body of his wife. They survived, although they shouldn't have.

• Shocking accounts of survivors of the extermination camp.
• Testimonies of Polish witnesses who observed the crimes.
• Detailed report from a place of mass extermination.
• Analysis of the precision with which the extermination was planned.
• Attempt to understand the DNA of evil that led to this tragedy.
• Unanswered questions about how this could have happened.

The corpses lying by the tracks of those who tried to escape from the transports, the stench of bodies burned day and night on pyres, a place where death was as omnipresent as the air - this is the perspective of local residents, witnesses giving testimony after the war.

Reading this very necessary volume leaves the reader with a sense of horror, shows the precision of the extermination planned in the smallest detail, allows us to see the DNA of evil, which here is largely the result of the actions of many people.

At the same time, it raises questions that are difficult to answer: how could all this have happened, why was the crime not punished after the war, and how is it possible that Bełżec was a forgotten place for so many years, plundered with impunity.

Piotr Paweł Reszka