Belzec (English: or , Polish: [buts]) was a Nazi German extermination camp built by the SS for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to murder all Polish Jews, a major part of the "Final Solution" which in total entailed the murder of about 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. The camp operated from 17 March 1942 to the end of June 1943. It was situated about 500 m (1,600 ft) south of the local railroad station of Beec, in the new Lublin District of the General Government territory of German-occupied Poland. The burning of exhumed corpses on five open-air grids and bone crushing continued until March 1943.Between 430,000 and 500,000 Jews are believed to have been murdered by the SS at Beec. It was the third-deadliest extermination camp, exceeded only by Treblinka and Auschwitz. Only seven Jews performing slave labour with the camp's Sonderkommando survived World War II; and only Rudolf Reder became known, thanks to his official postwar testimony. The lack of viable witnesses able to testify about the camp's operation is the primary reason why Beec is little known, despite the victim number count. Israeli historian David Silberklang writes that Belzec "was perhaps the place most representative of the totality and finality of the Nazi plans for Jews".

Pidhaitsi (Ukrainian: Підгайці, Pidhajci, Polish: Podhajce) is a small city in Ternopil Raion, Ternopil Oblast (province) of western Ukraine. It is located ca. 15.5 mi south of Berezhany, 43.5 mi from Ternopil and ca. 62 mi south-east of Lviv. In 1939 Pidhaitsi obtained the formal status of a city. It hosts the administration of Pidhaitsi urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. Population: 2,661 (2021 est.)Many of the current residents have the surname Koropetskyi/Koropetska, likely attributable to city's proximity to the Koropets River.