This revised and updated version of Chris Webb's comprehensive 2016 book covers the development and history of the first death camp in Poland within the Aktion Reinhardt mass murder program.
Webb outlines the construction of the death camp in Poland by the National Socialists and provides a comprehensive account of who built the death camp and how the mass murder was perfected by Christian Wirth, the first Commandant, who was well versed in the mass murder by gas, from his days in the T4 Organization.
The history of the death camp is retold with eyewitness testimony of some of the Jewish survivors, the Poles who helped build the death camp, and former SS members of the Garrison and German visitors to the camp.
The book includes an updated and revised Jewish Roll of Remembrance, with sources provided to verify each entry. This includes the handful of survivors as well as a comprehensive record of the victims, Polish and Czech Jews, and those deported from the Reich to Belzec.
The book also provides a detailed record of the leading figures of Aktion Reinhardt, including Odilo Globocnik, Christian Wirth, and Hermann Hofle, and members of the SS Garrison who served in Belzec. The biographies record their histories, what they did at Belzec, and their fates, where known.
Also covered are the post-war testimonies, trials, and excavations. A number of historic and contemporary photographs, some of which have never been published before, and documents and drawings enhance this edition.
From the deaths camp's construction to its deadly process of extermination, to the exhumation and incineration of hundreds of thousand corpses, and beyond, all is covered in exhaustive, well-researched detail. Unique to Chris Webb's work is the Jewish Roll of Remembrance that covers the handful of survivors and a fraction of the victims of this man-made hell.
Chris Webb's vital, private undertakings have a very publically spirited effect, reminding his readers that at Belzec, the worst was perpetrated against defenceless Jewish victims, again and again. Taken together, the detailed quotations, images, and testimony comprising this book serve to reinforce the impression that human depravity passed a certain threshold there, and this book offers an unforgettable glimpse of this abyss, when genocide was streamlined, administered, and employed against enemies of the Third Reich for no other reason than that they were Jewish.
-- Professor Matthew Feldman, York 2022
