Belzec

The Final Akcias

"Our city was declared Judenrein."

"One more time our father hid us in the mill in the attic, and I recall waking up to the most plaintive whistle of a locomotive, and I didn’t know then that my dearest friend Genia Reis was on that trip to Belzec Extermination Camp. At the time, all the people were taken to Belzec... In Belzec, in twenty-four hours, all the people were murdered by gas. And then the third and final akcia was fall of 1942, and again the people were brought to the railroad station and were packed into cattle cars and then our city was declared Judenrein, which means 'free of Jews,' and everyone had to leave within twenty-four hours to the neighboring ghettos: one in Kolomyja and one in Tluste where we wound up."

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