An update from Ashley, a junior journalism major and sociology minor:
Belzac is by far the most intense camp we’ve been to. It is an extermination camp, designed solely for the purpose of exterminating the Jews and all enemies of the Reich. At least 500,000 people were murdered there.
When we drove up, all you could see was this huge snow-covered hill with thousands of black stones sticking out. Immediately upon exiting the bus, there was a sign that read:
“This is the site of the murder
of about 500,000 victims
of the Belzac death camp
established for the purpose of killing
The Jews of Europe whose lives were brutally taken
between February and December 1942
By Nazi Germany.
Earth do not cover my blood
Let there be no resting
place for my outcry
Job 16:18″
Rust had dripped down from the lettering on the sign like fresh blood. My heart was captured from the second I stepped foot on the snowy ground.
The Belzac museum was amazing, and it shook me to my very core. The beginning contained a walk-through history with information on the war in general and Hitler’s extermination of the Jews; then you step into a room specifically about Belzac.
“Mommy, mommy, Haven’t I been good? It’s dark. It’s dark,” reads a huge stone in the middle of the room. A commandant of the camp said that this was a sound he heard from a child in the gas chamber. Heartwrenching, all of it.
In the next room, some of the victims of the camp are named. Each poster shows pictures from life before the war and gives some personal details about their lives. When I see names of people is when the reality of the Holocaust really starts to hit me. These were real people, not just ashes, not just a page in my history book, but real human beings whose lives were ended viciously.
There was one more room in the museum, The Reflection Room. I entered alone. There is no sign, just a heavy iron door that leads to a huge cement room. The room is empty except for a red stone with Polish writing etched in. It was terrifying in that room. Every ounce of my being wanted to turn and run for the door. You could almost hear the voices of the deceased crying out.
I traced my hand along the border of the room taking it all in. I felt so nauseated and scared and so completely alone. When I tried to leave, I pulled the door and it didn’t open. A moment of panic. Luckily I had just forgotten to push instead of pull, but what if I couldn’t leave? I am lucky. I get to see the camp and walk out the gate on the other side. 500,000 people didn’t have that privilege.
After leaving the museum I walked all the way into the monument to the back where we were leaving a candle in honor of the victims. The back wall had the same verse from Job etched into the stone, and on the inside the first names of victims had been carved.
Belzac was unbelievable. 500,000 people annihilated. The light and beauty brought into the world by half a million people was so brutally extinguished.
It is Christmas Eve and this is my only wish this year, “Unto every man a name.”
Never forget.
