"The old wooden building with its three gas chambers was dismantled,
and on the same site a bigger, more solid building was erected. The
new building was 24 meters long and 10 meters wide. It had six gas
chambers, each of them 4 x 8 meters. (According to other sources, the
size of the new gas chambers was 4 x 5 meters each.) Toward the middle
of July, the new gas chambers were operational." <1>
"Rudolf Reder, one of the two survivors of Belzec described the gas
chambers:
The building was low, long and wide. It was of grey concrete,
had a flat roof covered with pap, and above it a net covered
with green branches. Three steps without railings, 1 meter
wide, led into the building. In front of the building was a
big flower pot with colorful flowers and a clearly written
sign reading: 'Bade und Inhalationstraume' [Bath and
Inhalation Rooms]. The steps led to a dark, long, and empty
corridor, 1.5 meters wide. On the right and left of the
corridor were doors to the gas chambers. These were wooden
doors, 1 meter wide.... The corridor and the chambers were
lower than ordinary rooms, no higher than 2 meters. On the
opposite wall of each chamber was a removable door, 2 meters
wide, from which the gassed bodies were thrown out. Outside
the building was a shed, 2 x 2 meters, where the engine for
the gas was installed. The chambers were 1.5 meters above
ground level." <2>
"These new gas chambers could absorb over 2,000 people at a time, the
capacity of a transport of about twenty freight cars. Belzec was now
ready to renew activity on an even larger scale.."
<1> Yad Vashem Archives, TR-10/583, p. 1; Yad Vashem Archives,
TR-10/517, p.34
<2> YVA TR-10/517 (Belzec-Oberhauser), Band 8, p. 1514
Excerpted from....----------------------------------------------
BELZEC, SOBIBOR, TREBLINKA - the Operation Reinhard Death Camps
Indiana University Press - Yitzhak Arad, 1987. ISBN 0-253-3429-7
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