History & Overview
One of the three gas vans at Chelmno
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Chelmno was established
December 1941. The first commandant was Herbert Lange. The camp
consisted of two parts: administration section, barracks and
storage for plundered goods; burial and cremation site. It operated
three gas vans using carbon monoxide. The camp began operations on
December 7, 1942, and ended operations on March 1943. It resumed
operations June 23, 1944, and finally ceased operations January 17,
1945. The estimated number of deaths is 150-300,000, mainly Jews.
Chelmno, also known as
Kulmhof, was a small town roughly 50 miles from the city of Lodz.
It was here that the first mass killings of Jews by gas took place
as part of the "Final Solution." The murder process was set up by
a "Sonderkommando," under the command of Herbert Lange. He was
transferred to Chelmno directly from duties in the T4 euthanasia
program, murdering psychiatric patients in Posen. Lange and his
unit had developed much experience in the use of gas vans. These
early models were equipped to pipe carbon monoxide from cylinders
in the driver's cab into the van in which the 'patients were
locked.
A convoy arrives in Chelmno
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Lange's unit comprised
15-20 men of the SIPO and about 80-100 men of the "Schutzpolizei."
They took over a run-down castle in Chelmno and converted it into
their base camp with barracks and a reception area for deportees.
Each afternoon, Jews were brought under guard by train from Lodz
via Kolo junction (where they transferred to open rail cars
running on a narrow-gauge track), or from nearer locations by
lorry, to the castle or schloss. They were gathered in the castle
courtyard, subdivided into groups of 50 and told to undress. They
were forced to hand over all valuables. They were then told they
were about to be transferred to a work camp, but first they had be
disinfected and showered. They were taken down into the castle
cellar to a 'washroom' which actually led via a ramp into a
waiting van. Vicious beatings ensured that none hesitated or
declined to go inside. After 50-70 persons were jammed into the
van's freight compartment, the exhaust pipe was connected to an
opening in the compartment and the engine switched on. After about
ten minutes those inside were dead. The driver, usually a member
of the 'Schutzpolizei', then drove the van 2.5 miles into the
nearby Rzuchow Forest, to the second camp &endash; the
"Waldlager." Here the SS had prepared mass graves, dug by Jewish
slave labor, and later cremation pyres. A team of 40-50 Jews,
wearing leg-irons to prevent their escape, hauled the bodies out of
the van and dumped them in the graves. Another team of Jews sorted
the clothes and objects of those killed so that they could be made
available to Germans in the Reich. No less than 370 wagon loads of
clothing were supplied by these means.
The technology was quite
simple. The "Sonderkommando" had three vans at its disposal. The
only technical innovation was the specially constructed sealed
compartments mounted on a Renault chassis. These compartments were
lined with tin and had airtight, double doors. The floor of the
compartment had a wooden lattice to facilitate the cleaning out of
detritus. Beneath it was an aperture with a nozzle to which the
pipe from the exhaust was connected. By the time Lange's unit came
to use these vans, they had been tried and tested in the "euthanasia program".
Jews about to be gassed in Chelmno
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By these means, about 145,000
people were murdered at Chelmno in the first phase of its
operations. Gassings started on December 7, 1941. The first
deportees were Jews from surrounding communities and about 5,000 Gypsies who had been incarcerated in the Lodz ghetto. From January
16 to January 29, 1942, 10,000 Jews were deported from Lodz to
Chelmno and murdered. They were followed by 34,000 between March
22 and April 2, 1942, 11,700 between May 4 and 15, 1942,
16,000 between September 5 and 12, 1942. In addition, 15,200
Jewish slave laborers from the Lodz region were gassed at
Chelmno.
Amongst the deportees were Jews
from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia who had been transported
to the Lodz ghetto. After the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich
and the annihilation of the Czech town of Lidice, 88 children from
there were sent to Chelmno and murdered.
By March 1943, most of the
Jews of the Warthegau had been murdered. Only the 70,000 Jews in
the Lodz ghetto remained. Chelmno camp was wound up and the
schloss actually demolished. It was briefly reactivated on the
same lines in April to July 1944 to assist with the liquidation of
the Lodz "ghetto". In this period, a further 25.000 Lodz Jews were
murdered at Chelmno. Afterwards, a unit of "Sonderkommando" 1005
labored to clean up the traces of mass murder. On January 17,
1945, the work group, numbering 48 men, was to be shot, but the
Jews revolted and in the ensuing melee a handful escaped.
There were few survivors of the
most intense phase of murder at Chelmno. In mid-January
1942,Yaakov Grojanowski escaped and made his way to Warsaw where
he informed the ghetto leadership of what he had witnessed. As a
result, fairly accurate information about the mass killings at
Chelmno was transmitted via the Polish underground and reached
London in June. Altogether, only seven people survived and none remain alive.
Sources: The
Forgotten Camps; Wesley Pruden, “The last living witnesses; they wore the yellow star and remember the Nazi terror,” Washington Times, (December 12, 2013).
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