Belzec Review

Belzec Review - Congregational Libraries Today

The Nazis operated the Belzec extermination camp from March to December 1942. It is estimated that duing that time more than 600,000 Jews were killed there. Guillaume Moscovitz's documentary film, in Hebrew, Polish, and French with English subtitles, contains archival photgraphs and candid interviews with Polish residents recounting those terrible times.

Most touching of all is the testimony of one of a handful of Jewish survivors, Braha Rauffmann, who as a child escaped from Belzec. She was hidden by a Polish woman in a wheatfield, a cemetery, and a pigsty. during part of her harrowing experience, she felt as if she were buried alive and had to keep her knees bend in the small hole where she hid. Her ordeal ended after twenty months in hiding. She remembers looking up at the stars and realizing she was a nine-year-old "who did not remember the sky."

in 1943, as the Soviets advances, the Nazis closed Belzec. They tried to destroy all traces of its existence, planting a small forest of pine trees on the site. However, in recent years an archaeological excavation discovered thirty-one mass graves; there were human bones all over the area. An official memorial was placed in Belzec in 2004.

Exceptionally powerful and informative, this video is highly recommended for every collection that contains Holocaust literature.

Visit the Belzec movie page