Chełmno extermination camp

Chełmno extermination camp () was the first extermination camp (death camp) opened by Nazi Germany.  It was 50 kilometres (31 mi) north of the city of Łódź, Poland.  In 1939, Nazi Germany had invaded Poland, and had annexed (took control of) parts of Poland.

The Nazis built Chełmno with the specific goal of carrying out ethnic cleansing through mass murder.  The Nazis kept Chełmno open from , as part of Operation Reinhard during the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, and again from  to  during the Soviet counter-offensive.

The Nazis murdered over 150,000 people at Chełmno, including many Polish Jews from the Łódź Ghetto and the local people who lived in Reichsgau Wartheland (Warthegau).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 (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."

Victims

The Nazis killed at least 152,000 people at Chełmno.  Nazi officials were eventually charged with killing at least 180,000 victims.

The Kulmhof Museum of Martyrdom (pl)says that around 200,000 people were killed at Chełmno.

Most of the people killed at Chełmno were:
 Jews from west-central Poland;
 Roma people from around Poland;
 Soviet prisoners of war; or
 Jews who had been forced to live in the Łódź Ghetto.  These included Jews from Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, Germany, Luxemburg, and Austria.

The Nazis killed these victims using gas vans.  They forced the victims into large vans, and then pumped carbon monoxide into the vans to suffocate and kill the victims.

Early on, the Nazis experimented at Chełmno.  They developed methods which they used later during The Holocaust in Nazi-controlled Poland.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, 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  (2000) that the letter was sent by Just, not by Becker, as shown through the archives of RSHA: Just an Rauff, 5.6.42; BA, R 58/871.

Destruction
Russian soldiers captured the town of Chełmno on .  By then, the Nazis had already destroyed evidence that the Chełmno camp ever existed.  They left no prisoners behind. One of the camp's survivors, who was fifteen years old at the time, said that only three Jewish males had escaped successfully from Chełmno.

In 1961, the three best-known survivors testified about Chełmno at Adolf Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem. In 1962-1965, two survivors also testified at trials held in West Germany against people who worked at the camp.

References

Category:Nazi concentration camps in Poland
Category:1941 establishments in Europe
Category:1940s establishments in Poland
Category:1945 disestablishments
Category:1940s in Poland