page_title: Chełmno extermination camp
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Chełmno extermination camp / Background
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Arthur Greiser Der Chef der Zivilverwaltung beim Militärbefehlshaber in Posen, SS-Brigadeführer Präsident Greiser in seinem Arbeitszimmer in Posen. 11.10.39 "Fr. OKW" [Arthur Greiser am Schreibtisch] Abgebildete Personen: Greiser, Arthur: Senatspräsident von Danzig, Gauleiter Warthegau, Deutschland Information added by Wikimedia users.Arthur Greiser (22 January 1897 – 21 July 1946), Nazi German SS-Obergruppenführer and Reichsstatthalter in the German-occupied territory of Poland renamed Reichsgau Wartheland (sometimes called Warthegau). Greiser was one of the persons primarily responsible for organizing the Holocaust in Poland
context_page_description: Chełmno or Kulmhof was the first of Nazi Germany's extermination camps and was situated 50 kilometres north of Łódź, near the village of Chełmno nad Nerem. Following the invasion of Poland in 1939, Germany annexed the area into the new territory of Reichsgau Wartheland. The camp, which was specifically intended for no other purpose than mass murder, operated from December 8, 1941 to April 11, 1943, parallel to Operation Reinhard during the deadliest phase of the Holocaust, and again from June 23, 1944 to January 18, 1945 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 killed in the camp, which would make it the fifth deadliest extermination camp, after Sobibór, Bełżec, Treblinka, and Auschwitz. 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.
context_section_description: Chełmno nad Nerem is a village in Poland, 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 and SD from headquarters in occupied Poznań (Posen). Damzog formed the SS-Sonderkommando Lange (special detachment), and appointed Herbert Lange the first camp commandant because of his experience in the mass killing of Poles from Wartheland (Wielkopolska). Lange served with Einsatzgruppe VI during Operation Tannenberg. 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, 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 December 8, 1941 using vehicles approved by Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich from RSHA. Two months later, on January 20, 1942 Heydrich, who had already confirmed the effectiveness of industrial killing 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 dated May 30, 1942 Greiser referred to an authorization he had received from him and Reinhard Heydrich; stating that the clandestine program of killing 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 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 in Poznań. Damzog supervised the camp's daily operations thereafter.
caption: Gauleiter Arthur Greiser in Poznań (Posen), 1939
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