By VANESSA GERA
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

June 3, 2004

 

BELZEC, Poland -- A rabbi's prayer and warnings against the evils of racism inaugurated a new memorial Thursday to victims of the Belzec death camp, where 500,000 Jews and other Nazi targets were exterminated during just seven months of World War II.

The memorial, sponsored by the American Jewish Committee and the Polish government, is meant to give dignity and greater prominence to the memory of Belzec's victims after the site was neglected for decades under communism.

"This memorial will help to ensure that the world will never forget the horrors of fascism and racism," said a message from President Bush that was read at the ceremony.

"This site is also sobering reminder that every nation has a responsibility to confront and denounce anti-Semitism and the violence it breeds."

The Belzec memorial was unveiled a month after Poland's entry into the European Union, a sign of post-communist governments' growing effort to acknowledge that much of the Holocaust took place on German-occupied Polish soil.

Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski hailed the project as "an important step in the process of Polish-Jewish reconciliation."

Belzec was 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 one to use gas chambers, which operated in March-December 1942.

After closing the camp, the Nazis dug up bodies, burned and crushed them, then reburied the remains in 33 mass graves to try to hide their crimes. They planted trees and built a house over the graves.

Commemoration of Belzec's victims was difficult because virtually no one survived the camp and its victims were not registered. Belzec victims were brought in by train and sent straight to the gas chambers.

Rabbi Andrew Baker of the American Jewish Committee said he knew of only two survivors.

"There is no firsthand testimony from victims," said Baker, the project leader.

In communist times until 1989, a monument commemorated "victims of fascism" in general, reflecting an official line that Jews believed did not reflect their suffering.

Even after communism fell, the site was littered with garbage and local people took shortcuts across it.

Ash and shards of bone were continuously brought to the surface by wind and rain - a desecration because Jewish religious law says remains must not be moved or disturbed.

The new memorial includes a display on the death camp's history and a polished concrete wall inscribed with the first names of some victims.

Kwasniewski mourned the annihilation of Jews from Galicia - an area of prewar Poland that is now part of Ukraine - and said the memorial served as a warning at a time of resurgent anti-Semitism in Europe.

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

Miles Lerman, who chaired the council overseeing the Holocaust Museum in Washington, launched the project more than 10 years ago. He lost his mother, sister and other family members at Belzec.

"Throughout the years, Belzec fell into oblivion and terrible disarray, with the mass graves littered with beer bottles and other garbage," he said.

"It was heartbreaking to see it in this condition. And we resolved not to rest until we get this place restored to the decency the victims deserve."