Editing Belzec extermination camp (section)

===Concealment of camp's purpose===
[[File:Belzec extermination camp sign.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|Polish-language sign. Reads: "Attention! All belongings must be handed in at the counter except for money, documents and other valuables, which you must keep with you. Shoes should be tied together in pairs and placed in the area marked for shoes. Afterward, one must go completely naked to the showers."]]

Bełżec "processing" zone consisted of two sections surrounded by a high [[barbed wire]] fence camouflaged with cut [[fir]] branches: Camp 1, which included the victims' unloading area with two undressing barracks further up; as well as Camp 2, which contained the gas chambers and the mass graves dug by the [[crawler excavator]].<ref name="Collections">{{cite AV media |author=USHMM |year=2015 |title=Testimony of Bronisław Ragan |publisher=[[USHMM]] Collections |url=http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn507888 |access-date=29 April 2015 }} See also: [http://www.deathcamps.org/belzec/pic/bmap10.jpg sketch by Jan Krupa and Bronisław Ragan] made at the request of the Bełżec Mayor, circa 1971.</ref> The two zones were completely screened from each other and connected only by a narrow corridor called ''der Schlauch'', or "the Tube".<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/> All arriving Jews disembarked from the trains at a platform in the reception zone. They were met by ''SS-Scharführer'' Fritz Jirmann (Irmann) standing at the podium with a loudspeaker,<ref name="Collections"/> and were told by the ''[[Sonderkommando]]'' men that they had arrived at a transit camp.<ref name="Reder"/> To ready themselves for the communal shower, women and children were separated from men.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/> The disrobed new arrivals were forced to run along a fenced-off path to the gas chambers, leaving them no time to absorb where they were. The process was conducted as quickly as possible amid constant screaming by the Germans.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/> At times, a handful of Jews were selected at the ramp to perform all the manual work involved with extermination.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/>

The wooden gas chambers—which were built with double walls that were insulated by earth packed between them—were disguised as the shower barracks, so that the victims would not realise the true purpose of the facility. The gassing itself, which took about 30 minutes, was conducted by Hackenholt with the Ukrainian guards and a Jewish aide.<ref name="Klee_238"/> Removing the bodies from the gas chambers, burying them, sorting and repairing the victims' clothing for shipping was performed by ''Sonderkommando'' work-details.<ref name="Klee_238">{{harvnb|Klee|Dressen|Riess|1991|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=ACWKeRF49UYC&pg=PA238 "Chapter 4. The camp had clean sanitary facilities" pp. 238–244]}}</ref> The workshops for the Jewish prisoners and the barracks for the Ukrainian guards were separated from the "processing" zone behind an embankment of the old Otto Line with the barbed wire on top.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/> Most Jews from the corpse-unit (the ''Totenjuden'') were murdered periodically and replaced by new arrivals, so that they would neither organise a revolt nor survive to tell about the camp's purpose.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/> The German SS and the administration were housed in two cottages outside the camp.<ref name="ushmm-belzec"/>