Belzec death camp memorial inaugurated

BELZEC, Poland

June 3, 2004
Jerusalem Post news

By Associated Press

A vast new memorial to victims of the Belzec death camp was inaugurated Thursday in the presence of Polish, U.S. and Israeli dignitaries, ending decades of neglect at the site where some 500,000 Jews perished in 1942.

For years, the former camp where the Nazis buried their victims' remains was strewn with trash, and used as a short cut by townsfolk. Bone shards were washed up by rain, violating Jewish religious laws that the dead remain undisturbed .

The new memorial, a sprawling field covered by artificial rocks resembling ash, is meant to protect the remains and give dignity to the victims.

Large walls are inscribed with the first names of some of the victims _ from Aaron and Alta to Zeicha and Zaneta _ men, women and children brought by train from throughout the region of Galicia and gassed at Belzec between March and December 1942.

"This whole Jewish universe of Galicia was wiped off the map and buried in this grave," Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski said in a speech, before lighting a candle in memory of the victims.

"I trust that as of today the memory of what happened here will not be only Jewish or Polish alone. We should spare no effort to make it part of the collective memory of the whole of Europe and the world at large," he said.

Kwasniewski hailed the memorial _ which cost nearly US$5 million and was paid for by the Polish government and the American Jewish Committee _ as "an important step in the process of Polish-Jewish reconciliation."

Under communism, a monument at Belzec commemorated "victims of fascism," reflecting an official line that Jews felt did not reflect their suffering.
The ceremony included blessings in Hebrew and prayers recited by Catholic bishops, as well as remarks by the U.S., German and Israeli ambassadors.

U.S. President George W. Bush said in a message read at the ceremony that the memorial would help ensure that the horrors of fascism and racism are never forgotten.

"We must never lose the courage to oppose hatred, aggression and murderous ambition wherever we find them," Bush said.

The new memorial includes a museum about Belzec, one of six death camps set up in occupied Poland as part of the Nazi "final solution" to exterminate Europe's Jews. It was the first to use gas chambers, according to the AJC.

After closing the camp, the Nazis dug up the bodies, burned and crushed them, then reburied the remains in the mass graves to try to hide their crimes as the Soviet army approached. They then planted trees and built a manor house near the graves.

The trees planted by Nazis were torn up as part of the new memorial project "to lay bare the deception of the Nazis," said Rabbi Andrew Baker, the project leader for the American Jewish Committee.

The field is encircled by a path, with an inscription every few steps of European cities whose Jewish communities were decimated. The only place to cross through the grave site is through a fissure in the ground.

"It's so you can imagine the quantity of victims," said Marcin Roszczyk, one of the memorial's designers. "Our target was to reach people's hearts, not their minds."

Jerry Ungar, 85, traveled to the dedication from Great Neck, New York, with her husband, who lost his first wife and year-old son at Belzec.

"We were here in 1992 and we stood on bone shards," she said. "We wished we'd had wings to get off the ground because we felt we were desecrating it. Now no one can step on the soil - it looks holy."