WARSAW (Press Release) – Polish, American, and Israeli government officials joined AJC leadership, including AJC President Stanley Bergman, in Belzec on Wednesday, June 25, to mark the tenth anniversary of the memorial and museum erected at the site of the Nazi death camp in southeastern Poland.
“Belzec is a stark lesson that we must never suffer from a failure of imagination about man’s capacity for evil,” said AJC Executive Director David Harris.
In 1942, during a nine-month period, an estimated 500,000 Jews perished at Belzec. The Nazis, occupying Poland, then made every effort to eliminate any trace of the death camp, its gas chambers, and 33 mass graves filled with the crushed bodies of murdered Jews.
When the Germans left, they planted trees on the site in an attempt to hide their crime. For decades, the place was open to people and animals passing through it and atop the makeshift graves. Only a small memorial marker erected in Communist times gave any indication of what took place there.
Until AJC and the restored democratic government of Poland collaborated on a massive, multi-year project to preserve the 15 acres of killing fields, they were completely unprotected. All decisions and costs of the memorial were shared equally by AJC and Polish authorities, itself a reflection of the common commitment to Holocaust memory.
“The site where nearly 2,000 women, men, and children were killed daily – was demarcated, protected, and memorialized, with a museum added to educate future generations about what happened there,” said Harris.
One ambassador, who visited the site, said the Belzec Museum-Memorial is “the most remarkable concept to create a lasting memorial to Holocaust victims where they were killed.”
Addressing Wednesday’s ceremony at Belzec, U.S. Ambassador to Poland Stephen Mull said, “I commend the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Polish government for establishing this memorial in order to ensure that the victims are never forgotten. This memorial honors the victims and teaches today’s generation – and future generations – about the dangers of intolerance and hatred.”
Former U.S. Ambassador to Poland Lee Feinstein, some of whose family perished in Belzec, wrote a letter that was read aloud to the audience, in which he said: “But for the vision of the government of Poland and the AJC this site would be lost to history.”
Representing the Polish Government, Jacek Olbtycht, Director General of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, read a letter from Malgorzata Omilanowska, the newly appointed Polish Minister of Culture. In the letter, Minister Omilanowska wrote, “We took the decision to protect this heritage – this place of memory of hundreds of thousands of Jews of Europe – as a place of solidarity.”
Israeli Ambassador to Poland Zvi Rav-Ner, who was born in the country, told the audience, “Indeed what AJC has done together with the Polish government is remarkable…It is important to remind ourselves and remind Europe and the rest of the world of Belzec.”
The audienceof more than 200 was also addressed by Tomasz Kranz, director of the Majdanek State Museum; Rabbi Michael Schudrich, Chief Rabbi of Poland; and Bishop Mieczysław Cisło, Auxiliary Bishop of Lublin.
The AJC leadership delegation included 15 leaders from across the U.S. who are traveling on an AJC mission to Lithuania and Poland.
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Preceding provided by the American Jewish Committee