500,000
Jews, Poles, and Roma were sent to Belzec.
Belzec was an extermination camp. In other words, its sole purpose was to kill. On arrival a handful of the Jews were selected to help with the extermination process, and the rest were ordered to undress "in order to take a shower" and were gassed. At Belzec 434,508 Jews and an unknown number of gypsies were killed and there are only two (!) known survivors. "Selection" on a large scale only took place at Auschwitz, which was a combined labour and extermination camp.
Belzec was in operation from March-December, 1942. In that short period 434,508 Jews were killed there and an unknown number of gypsies.
Aushwitz and Belzec
Belzec was an extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II. It was one of the three main death camps along with Auschwitz and Treblinka. An estimated 600,000 to 700,000 Jews were murdered in Belzec between 1942 and 1943 through the use of gas chambers and mass shootings. Only a handful of survivors from Belzec are known.
Belzec extermination camp was in operation for only a short time - from March-December 1942. In those nine months the Nazis killed 434,508 Jews and an unknown number of gypsies there.
The link below even gives the names of the German guards at Belzec.
Belzec was a Nazi extermination camp for Jews and 'gypsies'. Its location is on the eastern edge of modern Poland. Its was not a labour camp: its sole function was to kill, usually by poisoning with carbon monoxide. The Hoefle Telegramme gives a total of 434,508 Jews killed at Belzec by the end of 1942 and an unspecified number of 'gypsies'. Of all the Nazi extermination camps, Belzec seems to have been the most efficient: there were only two (2) known survivors! They were: Rudolf Reder and Chaim Hirszman. Rudolf Reder emigrated to Canada in the late 1940s, but Chaim Hirszman was murdered by Polish antisemites in 1946.
The Jews.
525,000 people died in Belzec Concentration Camp.
On arrival at Belzec the victims were gassed as soon as practical (except for a tiny minority chosen to dig graves and move corpses). In all, 434,508 Jews and an unknown number of gypsies were killed there. There were only two (yes, two!) known survivors. (It is the only case where an exact number of Jewish victims can be given, thanks to an intercepted SS telegramme sent when gassings at Belzec had finished).
Why did who kill which Jews .