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Chełmno, or Kulmhof, was the first of
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
's
extermination camp Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe, primarily in occupied Poland, during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocau ...
s and was situated north of
Łódź Łódź is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located south-west of Warsaw. Łódź has a population of 655,279, making it the country's List of cities and towns in Polan ...
, near the village of Chełmno nad Nerem. Following the
invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, Polish Campaign, and Polish Defensive War of 1939 (1 September – 6 October 1939), was a joint attack on the Second Polish Republic, Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak R ...
in 1939, Germany annexed the area into the new territory of
Reichsgau Wartheland The Reichsgau Wartheland (initially Reichsgau Posen, also Warthegau) was a Nazi Germany, Nazi German ''Reichsgau'' formed from parts of Second Polish Republic, Polish territory Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, annexed in 1939 during World War ...
. The camp, which was specifically intended for no other purpose than mass murder, operated from , to , parallel to
Operation Reinhard Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt ( or ; also or ) was the codename of the secret Nazi Germany, German plan in World War II to exterminate History of the Jews in Poland, Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied ...
during the deadliest phase of
the Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
, and again from , to , during the Soviet counter-offensive. In 1943, modifications were made to the camp's killing methods as the reception building had already been dismantled. At the very minimum, 152,000 people were murdered in the camp, which would make it the fifth deadliest extermination camp, after
Auschwitz Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschw ...
,
Treblinka Treblinka () was the second-deadliest extermination camp to be built and operated by Nazi Germany in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the Treblinka, ...
,
Bełżec Belzec (English: or , Polish: , approximately ) was a Nazi German extermination camp in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), occupied Poland. It was built by the SS for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to ...
, and Sobibór. However, the West German prosecution, citing Nazi figures during the Chełmno trials of 1962–65, laid charges for at least 180,000 victims. The Polish official estimates, in the early postwar period, have suggested much higher numbers, up to a total of 340,000 men, women, and children. The gives the figure of around 200,000, the vast majority of whom were Jews of west-central Poland, along with Romani people from the region, as well as foreign Jews from Hungary, Bohemia and Moravia, Germany, Luxembourg, and Austria transported to Chełmno via the
Łódź Ghetto The Łódź Ghetto or Litzmannstadt Ghetto (after the Nazi German name for Łódź) was a Nazi ghetto established by the German authorities for Polish Jews and Roma following the Invasion of Poland. It was the second-largest ghetto in all of ...
, on top of the Soviet prisoners of war. The victims were murdered using gas vans. Chełmno was a place of early experimentation in the development of the Nazi extermination programme.
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...
troops captured the town of Chełmno on . By then, the Germans had already destroyed evidence of the camp's existence, leaving no prisoners behind. One of the camp survivors, who was fifteen years old at the time, testified that only three Jewish males had escaped successfully. The ''Holocaust Encyclopedia'' counted seven Jews who escaped; among them was the author of the Grojanowski Report, written under an assumed name by Szlama Ber Winer, a prisoner in the Jewish ''
Sonderkommando ''Sonderkommandos'' (, ) were Extermination through labor, work units made up of Nazi Germany, German Nazi death camp prisoners. They were composed of prisoners, usually Jews, who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the di ...
'' who escaped only to perish at Bełżec during the liquidation of yet another Jewish ghetto in German-occupied Poland. In June 1945, two survivors testified at the trial of camp personnel in Łódź. The three best-known survivors testified about Chełmno at the 1961 trial of
Adolf Eichmann Otto Adolf Eichmann ( ;"Eichmann"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; 19 March 1906 – 1 Ju ...
in
Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...
. Two survivors testified also at the camp personnel trials conducted in 1962–65 by
West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...
.


Background

Chełmno nad Nerem is a village in
Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...
, annexed to Nazi Germany in 1939 and renamed ''Kulmhof'' during German occupation. As the Nazis themselves exclusively referred to the camp as "Kulmhof", the name "Chełmno extermination camp" is not historically accurate, with its use perhaps deriving from the Main Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland shortly after the war. Chełmno (Kulmhof) camp was set up by '' SS-Sturmbannführer'' Herbert Lange, following his gas van experiments in the murder of 1,558 Polish prisoners of the Soldau concentration camp northeast of Chełmno nad Nerem. In October 1941, Lange toured the area looking for a suitable site for an extermination centre, and chose Chełmno on the Ner, because of the estate, with a large manor house similar to Sonnenstein, which could be used for mass admissions of prisoners with only minor modifications. Staff for the facility was selected personally by Ernst Damzog, Commander of
Security Police Security police usually describes a law enforcement agency which focuses primarily on providing security and law enforcement services to particular areas or specific properties. They may be employed by governmental, public, or private institutio ...
and SD from headquarters in occupied
Poznań Poznań ( ) is a city on the Warta, River Warta in west Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business center and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint John's ...
(Posen). Damzog formed the ''
SS-Sonderkommando The ''Schutzstaffel'' (; ; SS; also stylised with SS runes as ''ᛋᛋ'') was a major paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It bega ...
Lange'' (special detachment), and appointed Herbert Lange the first camp commandant because of his experience in the mass-murder of Poles from ''Wartheland'' (
Wielkopolska Greater Poland, often known by its Polish name Wielkopolska (; ), is a Polish Polish historical regions, historical region of west-central Poland. Its chief and largest city is Poznań followed by Kalisz, the oldest city in Poland. The bound ...
). Lange served with ''
Einsatzgruppe (, ; also 'task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the impl ...
'' VI during
Operation Tannenberg Operation Tannenberg (, ) was one of the first Anti-Polish sentiment, anti-Polish extermination actions by Nazi Germany in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), German-occupied Poland from September 1939 to January 1940. The operation was conducted ...
. Already by mid-1940, Lange and his men were responsible for the murder of about 1,100 patients in Owińska, 2,750 patients at
Kościan Kościan () () is a town on the Obra, Greater Poland Voivodeship, Obra canal in west-central Poland, with a population of 23,952 inhabitants as of June 2014. Situated in the Greater Poland Voivodeship, it is the capital of Kościan County. History ...
, 1,558 patients and 300 Poles at Działdowo, and hundreds of Poles at Fort VII where the mobile gas-chamber (''Einsatzwagen'') was invented. Their earlier hospital victims were usually shot out of town in the back of the neck. The two so-called ''Kaisers-Kaffe'' vans, manufactured by the Gaubschat factory in Berlin, were delivered in November. Chełmno began mass gassing operations on using vehicles approved by ''
Obergruppenführer (, ) was a paramilitary rank in Nazi Germany that was first created in 1932 as a rank of the ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA) and adopted by the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) one year later. Until April 1942, it was the highest commissioned SS rank after ...
''
Reinhard Heydrich Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( , ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a German high-ranking SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust. He held the rank of SS-. Many historians regard Heydrich ...
from
RSHA The Reich Security Main Office ( , RSHA) was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as ''Chef der Deutschen Polizei'' (Chief of German Police) and , the head of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS). The organization's stat ...
. Two months later, on , Heydrich, who had already confirmed the effectiveness of industrial-scale murder by exhaust fumes, called a secret meeting of German officials to undertake the European-wide Final Solution to the Jewish Question under the pretext of "resettlement". The use of the killing centre at Chełmno for the mass murder of rapidly growing number of Jews deported to the Łódź Ghetto ("Special Handling", the '' Sonderbehandlung'') was initiated by Arthur Greiser, the Governor of ''Reichsgau Wartheland''. In a letter to
Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was a German Nazism, Nazi politician and military leader who was the 4th of the (Protection Squadron; SS), a leading member of the Nazi Party, and one of the most powerful p ...
dated , Greiser referred to an authorization he had received from him and
Reinhard Heydrich Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( , ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a German high-ranking SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust. He held the rank of SS-. Many historians regard Heydrich ...
, stating that the clandestine program of murdering 100,000 Polish Jews, about one-third of the total Jewish population of ''Wartheland'', was expected to be carried out soon. Greiser's plan was based on the German government's decision of October 1941 to deport German Jews to the Łódź Ghetto. Greiser and the SS decided to create space for the incoming Jews by annihilating the existing Polish-Jewish population in his district. According to post-war testimony of Wilhelm Koppe,
Higher SS and Police Leader The title of SS and Police Leader (') designated a senior Nazi Party official who commanded various components of the SS and the German uniformed police ('' Ordnungspolizei''), before and during World War II in the German Reich proper and in the ...
for ''Reichsgau Wartheland'', Koppe received an order from Himmler to liaise with Greiser regarding the ''Sonderbehandlung'' requested by the latter. Koppe entrusted the extermination operation to ''SS-Standartenführer'' Ernst Damzog from
Security Police Security police usually describes a law enforcement agency which focuses primarily on providing security and law enforcement services to particular areas or specific properties. They may be employed by governmental, public, or private institutio ...
in
Poznań Poznań ( ) is a city on the Warta, River Warta in west Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business center and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint John's ...
. Damzog supervised the camp's daily operations thereafter.


Architecture

The killing center consisted of a vacated manorial estate in the village of Chełmno on the Ner river, and a large forest clearing about northwest of Chełmno, off the road to Koło town with a sizable Jewish population which had been previously ghettoized. The two sites were known respectively as the ''Schlosslager'' (manor-house camp) and the ''Waldlager'' (forest camp).Alan Heath (Sep 16, 2007), (''about razed manor house''). Narration by the author. Retrieved
Alan Heath
is a British publisher, writer and Holocaust historian specialising in Nazi death camps. He is the author of a series of video essays about the German killing factories in Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek and Auschwitz. In March 2007, Heath accompanied Holocaust denier
David Irving David John Cawdell Irving (born 24 March 1938) is an English author and Holocaust denier who has written on the military and political history of World War II, especially Nazi Germany. He was found to be a Holocaust denier in a British court ...
on a tour of the death camps in Poland.
On the grounds of the estate was a large two-story brick
country house image:Blenheim - Blenheim Palace - 20210417125239.jpg, 300px, Blenheim Palace - Oxfordshire An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a Townhou ...
called "the palace". Its rooms were adapted to use as the reception offices, including space for the victims to undress and to give up their valuables. The '' SS'' and police staff and guards were housed in other buildings in the town. The Germans had a high wooden fence built around the manor house and the grounds. The clearing in the forest camp, which contained large mass graves, was likewise fenced off. The camp consisted of separate zones: an administration section with nearby barracks and storage for plundered goods; and the more distant burial and cremation site to which victims were delivered in hermetically proofed ''superstructures''.Alan Heath (Sep 20, 2007), (the road through town to forest). Narration by Alan Heath.


Operations

The ''SS-Sonderkommando "Lange"'' was supplied with two vans initially, each carrying about 50 Jews gassed en route to the forest. Later on, Lange was given three gas vans by the
RSHA The Reich Security Main Office ( , RSHA) was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as ''Chef der Deutschen Polizei'' (Chief of German Police) and , the head of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS). The organization's stat ...
in Berlin for the murder of greater numbers of victims. The vehicles had been converted to mobile gas-chambers by the Gaubschat company ( de) in Berlin which, by June 1942, produced twenty of them in accordance with the SS purchase order. The sealed compartments (also called superstructures) installed on the chassis had floor openings – about in diameter – with metal pipes welded below, into which the engine exhaust was directed. Victims generally suffocated to death, with their "bodies thrown out blue, wet with sweat and urine, the legs covered with excrement and menstrual blood". Drivers of gas vans also heard victims screaming and knocking on the walls. The SS had first used pure carbon monoxide from steel cylinders to murder mental patients in extermination hospitals of Action T4, and therefore had considerable knowledge of its efficacy. For all practical purposes, the extermination by mobile gas vans proved equally efficient following
Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along ...
of 1941. In the newly occupied territories, the gas vans were used to murder mental patients as well as Jews in the extermination ghettos. By employing just three vans on the Eastern Front (the ''Opel-Blitz'' and the larger ''Saurerwagen''), without any faults occurring in the vehicles, the ''
Einsatzgruppen (, ; also 'task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the imp ...
'' were able to murder 97,000 captives in less than six months between December 1941 and June 1942. The SS relayed urgent requests to Berlin for more vans.A secret memorandum of written by one Willy Just, to the Director of section II D ''SS-Obersturmbannführer'' Walter Rauff at the Reich Main Security Office (''Reichssicherheitshauptamt'' in Berlin), contained five pages of numbered paragraphs, suggesting mechanical improvements to gas vans. In the opening line, the letter stated: "ninety-seven thousand have been processed, using three vans, without any defects showing up in the vehicles"
(see attached photocopies at HolocaustHistory.org)
'' In his postwar testimony ''Obersturmbannführer''
August Becker August Becker (17 August 1900 – 31 December 1967) was a mid-ranking functionary in the Schutzstaffel, SS of Nazi Germany and chemist in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). He helped design the vans with a gas chamber built into the back ...
, the gas van inspector, claimed that the letter was sent by himself on to Walter Rauff in RSHA. ''See:'' Nevertheless, Christopher Browning confirmed in his
Evidence for the Implementation of the Final Solution
' (2000) that the letter was sent by Just, not by Becker, as shown through the archives of
RSHA The Reich Security Main Office ( , RSHA) was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as ''Chef der Deutschen Polizei'' (Chief of German Police) and , the head of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS). The organization's stat ...
: Just an Rauff, 5.6.42; BA, R 58/871.
The rank and file of the so-called ''SS Special Detachment Lange'' was made up of
Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...
, Criminal Police, and
Order Police The ''Ordnungspolizei'' (''Orpo'', , meaning "Order Police") were the uniformed police force in Nazi Germany from 1936 to 1945. The Orpo was absorbed into the Nazi monopoly of power after regional police jurisdiction was removed in favour of t ...
personnel, under the leadership of Security Police and SD officers. Herbert Lange was replaced as camp commandant in March (or April) 1942 by Schultze. He was succeeded by SS-Captain Hans Bothmann, who formed and led the ''Special Detachment Bothmann''. The maximum strength of each Special Detachment was just under 100 men, of whom around 80 belonged to the Order Police. The local ''SS'' also maintained a "paper command" of the camps '' Allgemeine-SS'' inspectorate, to which most of the Chełmno camp staff were attached for administrative purposes. Historians do not believe members of the 120th SS-Standarte office established in Chełmno performed any duties at the camp.


Deportations begin

The ''SS'' and police began murdering victims at Chełmno on . The first people transported to the camp were the Jewish and Romani populations of Koło, Dąbie, Sompolno, Kłodawa, Babiak,
Izbica Kujawska Izbica Kujawska is a town in central Poland with 2,808 inhabitants (2004). It is situated in the Włocławek County in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, in the historic region of Kuyavia. History Izbica was a private town, administratively loc ...
, Bugaj, Nowiny Brdowskie and Kowale Pańskie. A total of 3,830 Jews and around 4,000 Romani were murdered by gas before February 1942. The victims were brought from all over
Koło County __NOTOC__ Koło County () is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Greater Poland Voivodeship, west-central Poland. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local government reforms in 1998. ...
() to Koło by rail with the last stop in Powiercie. Using whips, the Orpo police marched them toward the
Warta river The river Warta ( , ; ; ) rises in central Poland and meanders greatly through the Polish Plain in a north-westerly direction to flow into the Oder at Kostrzyn nad Odrą on Poland's border with Germany. About long, it the second-longest rive ...
near Zawadka, where they were locked overnight in a mill, without food or water. The next morning, they were loaded onto lorries and taken to Chełmno. At "the palace", they were stripped of possessions, transferred to vans, and murdered with exhaust fumes on the way to burial pits in the forest. The daily average for the camp was about six to nine van-loads of the dead. The drivers used gas-masks. From January 1942, the transports included hundreds of Poles and Soviet prisoners of war. In addition, they included over 10,000 Jews from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Moravia and Luxembourg, who had first been deported to the ghetto in Łódź and subsisted there already for weeks. In late February 1942, the secretary of the local Polish council in Chełmno, Stanisław Kaszyński (b. 1903), was arrested for trying to bring public attention to what was being perpetrated at the camp. He was interrogated and executed three days later on February 28, 1942, near a church along with his wife. His secret
communiqué A press release (also known as a media release) is an official statement delivered to members of the news media for the purpose of providing new information, creating an official statement, or making an announcement directed for public releas ...
was intercepted by the ''SS-Sonderkommando''. Today, there is an obelisk to his memory erected at Chełmno on . Over 4,500, Czech Jews from Prague were sent to the
Łódź Ghetto The Łódź Ghetto or Litzmannstadt Ghetto (after the Nazi German name for Łódź) was a Nazi ghetto established by the German authorities for Polish Jews and Roma following the Invasion of Poland. It was the second-largest ghetto in all of ...
before May 1942. One of the sisters of author
Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of Litera ...
, Valli Kafka (born 1890), was murdered with them before mid-September.


Killing process

During the first five weeks, the murder victims came only from the nearby areas. On reaching their final destination before "transport" to Germany and Austria, the Jews disembarked in the courtyard of the ''Schlosslager'' manor where the ''SS'' men wearing white coats and pretending to be medics waited for them with a translator released earlier from the Gestapo prison in
Poznań Poznań ( ) is a city on the Warta, River Warta in west Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business center and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint John's ...
. The victims were led to a large empty room and ordered to undress; their clothing stacked for disinfection. They were told that all hidden banknotes would be destroyed during steaming and needed to be taken out and handed over for safe-keeping. Occasionally they were met by a German officer dressed as a local squire with a Tyrolean hat, announcing that some of them would remain there. Wearing just underwear, with the women allowed to keep
slips Slips (or SLIPS) may refer to: *Slips (oil drilling) *SLIPS (Slippery Liquid Infused Porous Surfaces) *SLIPS (Sri Lanka Interbank Payment System) *Slip (cricket), often used in the plural form *The Slips, a UK electronic music duo See also

* ...
on, the victims were taken to the cellar and across the ramp into the back of a gas van holding from 50–70 people each ('' Opel Blitz'') and up to 150 ('' Magirus''). When the van was full, the doors were shut and the engine started. Surviving witnesses heard their screams as they were dying of
asphyxiation Asphyxia or asphyxiation is a condition of deficient supply of oxygen to the body which arises from abnormal breathing. Asphyxia causes generalized hypoxia, which affects all the tissues and organs, some more rapidly than others. There are ...
. After about 5–10 minutes, the vans full of corpses were driven to the forest ''Waldlager'' camp. The vans were unloaded to excavated mass graves, and cleaned by the ''Waldkommando'' before returning to the manor house. ''Scharführer'' Walter Burmeister, a gas-van driver, made sure his own vehicle "would be cleaned of the excretions of the people that had died in it. Afterwards, it would once again be used for gassing" at the loading dock.


Murder of Jews from the Łódź ghetto

On January 16, 1942, the ''SS'' and police began deportations from the Łódź Ghetto lasting for two weeks. German officials with the aid of ''
Ordnungspolizei The ''Ordnungspolizei'' (''Orpo'', , meaning "Order Police") were the uniformed police force in Nazi Germany from 1936 to 1945. The Orpo was absorbed into the Nazi monopoly of power after regional police jurisdiction was removed in favour of t ...
'' rounded up 10,000 Polish Jews based on selection by the ghetto '' Judenrat''. The victims were transported from the Radegast train station in Łódź, to Koło railway station, northwest of Chełmno. There, the ''SS'' and police personnel supervised transfer of prisoners from the freight as well as passenger trains, to smaller-size cargo trains running on narrow gauge tracks, which took them from Koło to a much smaller Powiercie station,Alan Heath, (deportation photo, 1 minute). Narration by Alan Heath. just outside Chełmno. As round-ups in Łódź normally took place in the morning, it was usually late afternoon by the time Jews disembarked from the
Holocaust trains Holocaust trains were railway transports run by the ''Deutsche Reichsbahn'' and other European railways under the control of Nazi Germany and its allies, for the purpose of forcible deportation of the Jews, as well as other victims of the Holo ...
in Powiercie. Therefore, they were marched to a disused mill at Zawadki some two kilometres distance where they spent the night. The mill building continued to be used after the railway repairs, if transports arrived late.Alan Heath, . Narration by Alan Heath. The following morning the Jews were transported from Zawadki by truck, in numbers which could be easily controlled at their destination. The victims were "processed" immediately upon arrival at the manor-house.Alan Heath, , Narration by Alan Heath. Beginning in late July 1942, the victims were brought to the camp directly from Powiercie after the regular railway line linking Koło with Dąbie was restored; and the bridge over the Rgilewka River had been repaired.Alan Heath, . Narration by Alan Heath.


''Sonderkommando''

The German SS staff selected young Jewish prisoners from incoming transports to join the camp ''
Sonderkommando ''Sonderkommandos'' (, ) were Extermination through labor, work units made up of Nazi Germany, German Nazi death camp prisoners. They were composed of prisoners, usually Jews, who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the di ...
'', a special unit of 50 to 60 men deployed at the forest burial camp. They removed corpses from the gas-vans and placed them in mass graves. The large trenches were quickly filled, but the smell of decomposing bodies began to permeate the surrounding countryside including nearby villages. In the spring of 1942, the ''SS'' ordered burning of the bodies in the forest. The bodies were cremated on open air grids constructed of concrete slabs and rail tracks; pipes were used for air ducts, and long ash pans were built below the grid.Alan Heath, "The Destruction of Corpses at Chelmno nad Nerem
YouTube video.
Narration by Alan Heath.
Later, the Jewish Sonderkommando had to exhume the mass graves and burn the previously interred bodies. In addition, they sorted the clothing of the victims, and cleaned the excrement and blood from the vans. A small detachment of about 15 Jews worked at the manor house, sorting and packing the belongings of the victims. Between eight and ten skilled craftsmen worked there to produce or repair goods for the ''SS'' Special Detachment.
Claude Lanzmann Claude Lanzmann (; 27 November 1925 – 5 July 2018) was a French filmmaker, best known for the Holocaust documentary film ''Shoah'' (1985), which consists of nine and a half hours of oral testimony from Holocaust survivors, without historical f ...
, ''
Shoah The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
'' (1985) documentary.
Periodically, the ''SS'' executed the members of the Jewish special detachment and replaced them with workers selected from recent transports. The ''SS'' held jumping contests and races among the prisoners, who were shackled with chains on their ankles, to deem who was fit to continue working. The losers of such contests were shot.


Stages of camp operation

The early killing process carried out by the SS from December 8, 1941, until mid-January 1942, was intended to murder Jews from all nearby towns and villages, which were slated for German colonization (''
Lebensraum (, ) is a German concept of expansionism and Völkisch movement, ''Völkisch'' nationalism, the philosophy and policies of which were common to German politics from the 1890s to the 1940s. First popularized around 1901, '' lso in:' beca ...
''). From mid-January 1942, the SS and Order Police began transporting Jews in crowded freight and passenger trains from Łódź. By then, Jews had also been deported to Łódź from Germany, Bohemia-Moravia, and Luxembourg, and were included in the transports at that time. The transports included most of the 5,000 Roma (Gypsies) who had been deported from Austria. Throughout 1942, the Jews from ''Wartheland'' were still being processed; in March 1943 the SS declared the district ''
judenfrei ''Judenfrei'' (, "free of Jews") and ''judenrein'' (, "clean of Jews") are terms of Nazi origin to designate an area that has been " cleansed" of Jews during the Holocaust. While ''judenfrei'' refers merely to "freeing" an area of all of i ...
''. Other victims murdered at the killing center included several hundred Poles, and Soviet prisoners of war. During the summer of 1942, the new commandant Bothmann made substantial changes to the camp's murder techniques. The change was prompted by two incidents in March and April of that year. First, the gas-van broke down on the highway while full of living victims. Many passers-by heard their loud cries. Soon after that, the Saurer van exploded while the driver was revving its engine at the loading ramp; the gassing compartment was full of living Jews. The explosion blew off the locked back door, and badly burned the victims inside. Drivers were replaced. Bothmann's modifications included adding poison to gasoline. There is evidence that some red powder and a fluid were delivered from Germany by Maks Sado freight company, in order to murder the victims more quickly. Another major change involved parking the gas vans while prisoners were murdered. They were no longer driven en route to the forest cremation area with living victims inside. After having annihilated almost all Jews of ''Wartheland'' District, in March 1943 the Germans closed the Chełmno killing centre, while
Operation Reinhard Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt ( or ; also or ) was the codename of the secret Nazi Germany, German plan in World War II to exterminate History of the Jews in Poland, Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied ...
was still underway elsewhere. Other death camps had faster methods of murdering and incinerating people. Chełmno was not a part of Reinhard. The ''SS'' ordered complete demolition of ''Schlosslager,'' along with the manor house, which was levelled. To hide the evidence of the ''SS''-committed war crimes, from 1943 onward, the Germans ordered the exhumation of all remains and burning of bodies in open-air cremation pits by a unit of ''Sonderkommando'' 1005. The bones were crushed on cement with
mallet A mallet is a tool used for imparting force on another object, often made of rubber or sometimes wood, that is smaller than a maul or beetle, and usually has a relatively large head. General overview The term is descriptive of the ...
s and added to the ashes. These were transported every night in sacks made of blankets to river Warta (or to the Ner River) on the other side of Zawadka, where they were dumped into the water from a bridge and from a flat-bottomed boat. Eventually, the camp authorities bought a bone-crushing machine (''Knochenmühle'') from Schriever and Co. in Hamburg to speed up the process.


The final extermination phase

On , in spite of earlier demolition of ''the palace'', the ''SS'' renewed gassing operations at Chełmno in order to complete the annihilation of the remaining 70,000 Jewish prisoners of the ghetto in Łódź,Jewish Virtual Library
Łódź. Overview of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto History.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Online Exhibition: "Give Me Your Children." Voices from the Lodz Ghetto.
Retrieved June 30, 2015.
the last ghetto in occupied Poland to produce war supplies for the Germans. The Special Detachment "Bothmann" returned to the forest and resumed murdering victims at a smaller camp, consisting of brand new wooden barracks along with new crematory pyres. First, the victims were taken to the desecrated church in Chełmno where they spent the night if necessary, and left their bundles behind on the way to the reception area. They were driven to the forest, where the camp authorities had constructed two fenced-out barracks for undressing before "shower", and two new open-air cremation pits, further up. The ''SS'' and police guarded the victims as they took off their clothes and gave up valuables before entering gas-vans. In this final phase of the camp operation, some 25,000 Jews were murdered. Their bodies were burned immediately after death. From mid-July 1944, the ''SS'' and police began deporting the remaining inhabitants of the Łódź ghetto to
Auschwitz-Birkenau Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) d ...
. In September 1944, the ''SS'' brought in a new Commando 1005 of Jewish prisoners from outside the ''Wartheland'' District to exhume and cremate remaining corpses and to remove evidence of the mass murder operations. A month later, the ''SS'' executed about half of the 80-man detachment after most of the work was done. The gas vans were sent back to Berlin. The remaining Jewish workers were executed just before the German retreat from the Chełmno killing center on January 18, 1945, as the Soviet army approached (it reached the camp two days later). The 15-year-old Jewish prisoner Simon Srebnik was the only one to survive the last executions with a gunshot wound to the head. Historians estimate that the ''SS'' murdered at least 152,000–180,000 people at Chełmno between December 1941 and March 1943, and from , until the Soviet advance. Note: a 1946–47 report by the placed the number closer to 340,000 based on a statistical approach, as the camp authorities had destroyed all waybills in an effort to hide their actions.Main Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland
''German Crimes in Poland'' (Warsaw: 1946, 1947)
, Archive of ''Jewish Gombin Genealogy'', with introduction by Leon Zamosc. ''Note:'' The Main (or Central) Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland () founded in 1945 was the predecessor of the
Institute of National Remembrance The Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (, abbreviated IPN) is a Polish state research institute in charge of education and archives which also includes two public prosecutio ...
(see also the ). ''Quote:'' "The Main Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against the Polish Nation – The Institute of National Memory... has a fifty years long history (1995). The creation of the Main Commission... was preceded by work done in London since 1943 by the
Polish Government in Exile The Polish government-in-exile, officially known as the Government of the Republic of Poland in exile (), was the government in exile A government-in-exile (GiE) is a political group that claims to be the legitimate government of a sovere ...
."


Chełmno trials

After the war, some Chełmno extermination camp personnel were tried in Poland as well as in other court cases spanning a period of about 20 years. The first judicial trial of three former members of the ''SS-Sonderkommando Kulmhof'', including camp's deputy commandant '' Oberscharführer'' Walter Piller, took place in 1945 at the District Court in
Łódź Łódź is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located south-west of Warsaw. Łódź has a population of 655,279, making it the country's List of cities and towns in Polan ...
. The examination of evidence during the investigation was carried out by Judge Władysław Bednarz. The subsequent four trials, held in
Bonn Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region. This ...
, began in 1962 and concluded three years later in 1965 in
Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...
.
Adolf Eichmann Otto Adolf Eichmann ( ;"Eichmann"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; 19 March 1906 – 1 Ju ...
testified about the camp during his 1961 war-crimes trial in Jerusalem. He visited it once in late 1942. Simon Srebnik, from the burial ''
Sonderkommando ''Sonderkommandos'' (, ) were Extermination through labor, work units made up of Nazi Germany, German Nazi death camp prisoners. They were composed of prisoners, usually Jews, who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the di ...
,'' testified in both the Chelmno Guard and Eichmann trials. Nicknamed ''Spinnefix'' at the camp, Srebnik was recognised by the Chelmno Guards only by this moniker. Walter Burmeister, a gas-van driver (not to be confused with the camp's ''SS-Unterscharfuehrer'' Walter Burmeister), testified in Bonn in 1967.


Survivors

According to the ''Holocaust Encyclopedia'', a total of seven Jews from the burial ''
Sonderkommando ''Sonderkommandos'' (, ) were Extermination through labor, work units made up of Nazi Germany, German Nazi death camp prisoners. They were composed of prisoners, usually Jews, who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the di ...
'' escaped from the ''Waldlager''. Determining the identities of the few survivors of Chełmno had presented ambiguity because records use different versions of their names. One survivor may not have been recorded in the early postwar years because he did not testify at trials of camp personnel. Five escaped during the winter of 1942, including
Mordechaï Podchlebnik Mordechaï Podchlebnik or Michał Podchlebnik (1907 – 1985) was a Polish Jew who managed to survive the Holocaust. He was a member of the '' Sonderkommando'' work detail for nearly two weeks at the Chełmno extermination camp in occupied ...
, Milnak Meyer, Abraham Tauber, Abram Roj and Szlama Ber Winer (Szlamek Bajler) whose identity was recognized also as Yakov or Jacob Grojanowski.Jon E. Lewis
Voices from the Holocaust
pages 101–102 (Google Books).
Mordechaï Zurawski and Simon Srebnik escaped later. Srebnik was among Jews shot by the Germans two days before the Russians entered Chełmno, but he survived. Winer wrote under pseudonym Grojanowski about the operations of the camp in his '' Grojanowski Report'', but he was rounded up with thousands of others and murdered in the gas chamber of Bełżec extermination camp. In June 1945, both Podchlebnik and Srebnik (then age fifteen), testified at the Chełmno trials of camp personnel in
Łódź Łódź is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located south-west of Warsaw. Łódź has a population of 655,279, making it the country's List of cities and towns in Polan ...
, Poland. In addition to being included in the ''Holocaust Encyclopedia'', Mordechaï Zurawski is included as survivor in three other sources,Gouri, Haim. ''Facing the Glass Booth: The Jerusalem Trial of Adolf Eichmann''. Wayne State University Press, 2004. p. 122. each of which documents his testifying, along with Srebnik and Podchlebnik about his experience at Chełmno, at the 1961 trial of
Adolf Eichmann Otto Adolf Eichmann ( ;"Eichmann"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; 19 March 1906 – 1 Ju ...
in
Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...
. In addition, Srebnik testified in the Chelmno Guard Trials of 1962–63. The French director
Claude Lanzmann Claude Lanzmann (; 27 November 1925 – 5 July 2018) was a French filmmaker, best known for the Holocaust documentary film ''Shoah'' (1985), which consists of nine and a half hours of oral testimony from Holocaust survivors, without historical f ...
included interviews with Srebnik and Podchlebnik in his documentary ''
Shoah The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
'', referring to them as the only two Jewish survivors of Chełmno, but this was mistaken. Some sources repeat that only Simon Srebnik and
Mordechaï Podchlebnik Mordechaï Podchlebnik or Michał Podchlebnik (1907 – 1985) was a Polish Jew who managed to survive the Holocaust. He was a member of the '' Sonderkommando'' work detail for nearly two weeks at the Chełmno extermination camp in occupied ...
survived the war but these are also in error.Rubenstein, Richard L. ''Approaches to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and Its Legacy''. Westminster John Knox Press, 1987. p. 197. Podchlebnik is sometimes referred to as Michał (or Michael), in Polish and English versions of his name.Epstein, Julia. ''Shaping Losses: Cultural Memory and the Holocaust''. University of Illinois Press, 2001. p. 58. Not all escapees have been identified in the postwar period. In 2002 Dr. Sara Roy of
Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
wrote that her father, Abraham Roy, belonged to the aforementioned survivors.Sara Roy, "Living with the Holocaust: The Journey of a Child of Holocaust Survivors"
''Journal of Palestine Studies'' (32):1, 2002
She said that her father was the escapee recognized by the ''Holocaust Encyclopedia'' as Abram Roj, although she was mistaken about their total number. Two other survivors of Chełmno include Yitzhak Justman and Yerachmiel Yisrael Widawski who escaped together from the forest burial commando in the winter of 1942. They arrived at
Piotrków Trybunalski Ghetto The Piotrków Trybunalski Ghetto () was created in Piotrków Trybunalski on , shortly after the 1939 German Invasion of Poland in World War II. It was the first Nazi ghetto in occupied Europe. founded on The town was occupied by the Wehrmacht on ...
in March 1942 and deposited their testimonies with Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau. Widawski spoke with Rabbi Lau as well as some members of the prewar Communal Council before he left the ghetto, robbing them of their peace of mind with earth-shattering facts about the extermination process. Widawski saw the bodies of thirteen relatives murdered in gas vans including his own fiancée. Both fugitives, Justman and Widawski, arrived also at the Częstochowa Ghetto and met with Rabbi Chanoch Gad Justman. They headed in various directions, making a great effort to inform and warn the Jewish communities about the fate that awaited them. However, many people refused to believe their stories.


See also

* The Holocaust in occupied Poland *
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics was a research institute founded in 1927 in Berlin, Germany. The Rockefeller Foundation partially funded the actual building of the Institute and helped keep the Institut ...
*
List of Nazi concentration camps According to the '' Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos'', there were 23 main concentration camps (), of which most had a system of satellite camps. Including the satellite camps, the total number of Nazi concentration camps that existed at one ...


Notes


References

*''This article incorporates data from the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust, dedicated to the documentation, study, and interpretation of the Holocaust. Opened in 1993, the museum explores the Holocaust through p ...
, and has been released under the
GFDL The GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL or GFDL) is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights ...
.'' Wikipedia OTRS ticket no. 2007071910012533 confirmed.


Further reading

* * * *''Chełmno Witnesses Speak'', 2004, Council for the Protection of Memory of Combat and Martyrdom in Warsaw & District Museum in Konin, * {{DEFAULTSORT:Chelmno extermination camp 1941 establishments in Germany 1941 establishments in Poland 1942 in Poland 1943 in Poland 1944 disestablishments in Poland German extermination camps in Poland