Editing Belzec extermination camp (section)

==Command structure==
{{further|Belzec trial}}

The camp's first commandant, [[Christian Wirth]], lived very close to the camp in a house which also served as a kitchen for the SS as well as an armoury.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_tZm7cwnGg | archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211117/q_tZm7cwnGg| archive-date=2021-11-17 | url-status=live|title=Belzec – the house of Christian Wirth | date=27 March 2007|via=YouTube |access-date=4 March 2014}}{{cbignore}}</ref> He later moved to the [[Lublin airfield camp]], to oversee [[Operation Reinhard]] till the end. After the [[Operation Achse|German takeover of Italy]] in 1943, he was transferred by Globocnik to serve along with him in his hometown of [[Trieste]].<ref name="retecivica">{{cite journal|url=http://www.retecivica.trieste.it/triestecultura/new/musei/risiera_san_sabba/brochure/Risiera%20inglese%20per%20e-brochure.pdf |title=Risiera di San Sabba. History and Museum |journal=With Selected Bibliography |year=2009 |access-date=2 May 2015 |author=San Sabba |pages=3 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120907014927/http://www.retecivica.trieste.it/triestecultura/new/musei/risiera_san_sabba/brochure/Risiera%20inglese%20per%20e-brochure.pdf |archive-date=7 September 2012 }}</ref> They set up the [[Risiera di San Sabba|San Sabba concentration and transit camp]] there, killing up to 5,000 prisoners and sending 69 [[Holocaust trains]] to Auschwitz. Wirth received the [[Iron Cross]] in April 1944. The following month he was killed [[Italian resistance movement|by partisans]] whilst travelling in an open-top car in what is now western [[Slovenia]]. After the camp's closure, his successor there ''SS-Hauptsturmführer'' [[Gottlieb Hering]] was transferred to [[Poniatowa concentration camp]] temporarily until the massacres of the ''[[Aktion Erntefest]]'', and later followed Wirth and Globocnik to Trieste.{{sfn|Arad|1999|pp=371–372}} After the war ended, Hering served for a short time as the chief of Criminal Police of [[Heilbronn]] in the American zone, and died in autumn 1945 in a hospital. [[Lorenz Hackenholt]] survived the defeat of Germany, but disappeared in 1945 without a trace.{{sfn|Klee|Dressen|Riess|1991|pp=230–237, 241, 296}}

[[File:Belzec - SS staff (1942).jpg|thumb|upright=1.35|Bełżec extermination camp SS staff, 1942. from right to left: [[Heinrich Barbl]], Artur Dachsel, [[Lorenz Hackenholt]], [[Ernst Zierke]], Karl Gringers, (unknown), Reinhold Feiks, Karl Alfred Schluch, and Friedrich Tauscher (front left).]]

Only seven former members of the ''SS-Sonderkommando Bełżec'' were indicted 20 years later in [[Munich]]. Of these, just one, [[Josef Oberhauser]] (leader of the SS guard platoon), was [[Belzec trial|brought to trial in 1964]], and sentenced to four years and six months in prison, of which he served half before being released.<ref name="Belzec-Prozess">[http://www.holocaust-history.org/german-trials/belzec-urteil.shtml Sentence by the First Munich District Court (Belzec-Prozess – Urteil, ''LG München I'')] {{in lang|de}}. Retrieved {{nowrap|9 August 2013}}.</ref>

===Camp guards===
Belzec camp guards included German ''[[Volksdeutsche]]'' and up to 120 former [[Trawniki men|Soviet prisoners of war]] (mostly Ukrainians) organised into four platoons.<ref name="arc-belzec"/><ref name="Reder">Reder, Rudolf, ''Belzec'', Państwowe Muzeum Oświęcim – Brzezinka, ed. by Franciszek Piper. {{ISBN|8390771535}}</ref> Following [[Operation Barbarossa]], all of them underwent special training at the [[Trawniki concentration camp#Key role of Trawniki men in Final Solution|Trawniki SS camp division]] before they were posted as "Hiwis" (German abbreviation for ''Hilfswilligen'', lit. [[Non-Germans in the German armed forces during World War II|"those willing to help"]]) in the concentration camps as guards and gas chamber operators.{{sfn|Arad|1999|pp=52, 177}} They provided the bulk of ''Wachmänner'' collaborators in all major killing sites of the [[Final Solution]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007397 |author=USHMM |title=Holocaust Encyclopedia: Trawniki |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC |year=2014}}</ref><ref name="Jabłoński">{{cite web |url=http://www.trawniki.hg.pl/traw/obozjab.html |title=Hitlerowski obóz w Trawnikach |work=The camp history |publisher=Trawniki official website |access-date=30 April 2013 |author=Mgr Stanisław Jabłoński (1927–2002) |language=pl}}</ref>