Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team The Belzec Death
Camp The death camp at Belzec was located in South Eastern
Poland, within the Lublin District, near the remote village of
Belzec, on the Lublin – Lvov railway line. In early 1940 the
Germans set up a number of labour camps in and around Belzec,
housing workers building the so-called “Otto Line,” a series of
fortifications on the border with the Soviet Union. These Jewish
labour camps were disbanded in October 1940. The death camp was
not part of, nor converted from any other recognised camp
facility. The death camp was built as part of Aktion Reinhard,
solely for the extermination of the Jews. Belzec was chosen as a
death camp purely for logistical reasons, Belzec railway station
was connected with the railway centre in Rawa Ruska (now in the
Ukraine), located 14km from Belzec. The main railway lines from
Lvov, Stanislawow in the East, and from Rzeszow, Przemysl,
Tarnow and Krakow in the South West all passed through Rawa
Ruska. The site chosen for