Bełżec extermination camp
Last Bełżec prisoner-labor transport sent to Sobibór
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗The prisoners forced to erase Bełżec's evidence were themselves marked for elimination once the work was finished.
26 June 1943: the last train out
On 26 June 1943 the SS deported the last Jewish forced labourers from the dismantled Bełżec killing centre to Sobibór.
The prisoners of SS-Sonderkommando Belzec had been forced to exhume and burn bodies and to dismantle the camp. They were told they were being transferred to a labour camp, and loaded into freight cars.
About 300 people were in that final transport.
One man got off
Chaim Hirszman escaped by jumping from the train while it was travelling to Sobibór.
He became one of only two former Bełżec prisoners who survived the war and left written accounts; the other was Rudolf Reder.
How the rest died is reported two ways
The Bełżec and Sobibór memorial museums report that the arriving prisoners resisted on the Sobibór ramp and were shot. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum instead summarises their fate as deportation to Sobibór for gassing.
By then, the Bełżec Museum says, the camp's buildings and equipment had been destroyed and the ground ploughed and planted to disguise the crime scene.
Sources
Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 2 audit passes Date corrected
How this was checked
Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →
Date corrected. The research places this at 1943-06-26.
What the sources leave uncertain
- The date 26 June 1943 is supported by both the Bełżec Museum and the scholarly history published by the Sobibór museum foundation.
- The prisoners’ precise manner of death at Sobibór is reported differently: USHMM says they were sent there to be gassed, while the Bełżec and Sobibór memorial museums say they resisted upon arrival and were shot.