The Chełmno trials were a series of consecutive war-crime trials of the Chełmno extermination camp personnel, held in Poland and in Germany following World War II . The cases were decided almost twenty years apart. The first judicial trial of the former SS men – members of the SS-Sonderkommando Kulmhof – took place in 1945 at the District Court in Łódź , Poland. The subsequent four trials, held in Bonn , Germany, began in 1962 and concluded three years later, in 1965 in Cologne .
83-405: A number of camp officials, gas-van operators and SS guards, were arraigned before the court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed at Chełmno (a.k.a. Kulmhof ) in occupied Poland in the period between December 1941 and January 1945. The evidence against the accused, including testimonies by surviving witnesses, former prisoners, and mechanics attending to repair needs of
166-532: A bath, that their clothes had to be disinfected and that they could hand in any valuable items beforehand to be registered. When they had undressed they were sent to the cellar of the castle and then along a passageway onto the ramp and from there into the gas-van. In the castle, there were signs marked "to the baths". The gas vans were large vans, about 4–5 m [13–16 ft] long, 2.2 m [7.2 ft] wide and 2 m [6.6 ft] high. The interior walls were lined with sheet metal. A wooden grille
249-547: A false statement. Srebnik worked at the forest camp during the second extermination phase, when the bodies were cremated after being delivered in the gas-vans. In March 1944... we were in the Sonderkommando camp... The stronger and better workers were sent to the woods... The Waldkommando consisted of about 40 Jews... We were all shackled... The furnaces were very primitive, they stood on a cement foundation... They were approximately three metres (10 feet) tall. The width
332-536: A gas van operator, and Alois Häfele, SS Untersturmführer, a camp Hauskommando leader. The latter's sentence was reduced by two years on appeal because he reportedly gave cigarettes to some of the walking dead. Half of the defendants were cleared of all charges and released. Oberscharführer Gustaw Fiedler, from Polizeiwachtkommando, was tried in 1965 in Cologne and sentenced to 13½ months imprisonment. The first camp commandant, SS Sturmbannführer Herbert Lange ,
415-564: A much smaller Powiercie station, 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 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. The following morning
498-675: A prisoner in the Jewish Sonderkommando 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 in Jerusalem . Two survivors testified also at the camp personnel trials conducted in 1962–65 by West Germany . Chełmno nad Nerem
581-596: A translator released earlier from the Gestapo prison in Poznań . 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
664-711: 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
747-618: The Holocaust Encyclopedia , Mordechaï Zurawski is included as survivor in three other sources, each of which documents his testifying, along with Srebnik and Podchlebnik about his experience at Chełmno, at the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem . In addition, Srebnik testified in the Chelmno Guard Trials of 1962–63. The French director Claude Lanzmann included interviews with Srebnik and Podchlebnik in his documentary Shoah , referring to them as
830-521: The Orpo police marched them toward the Warta river 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
913-707: The Poznań Prison on June 6, 1951. The very Decree of August 31, 1944 used in their sentencing was amended in December 1946, making the laws not applicable from the outset, in connection with the Soviet World War II crimes in Poland . Eleven indicted suspects from Chełmno were arraigned at the Special Criminal Court in Bonn , RFN ( Landgericht Bonn ) in 1962–1965 on charges of complicity to
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#1732783911239996-579: The SS Special Detachment. 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. The early killing process carried out by
1079-475: The SS and police began deporting the remaining inhabitants of the Łódź ghetto to Auschwitz-Birkenau . 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
1162-557: The SS murdered at least 152,000–180,000 people at Chełmno between December 1941 and March 1943, and from June 23, 1944 , until the Soviet advance. Note: a 1946–47 report by the Central Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland [ pl ] 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. After
1245-451: The SS , was examined in Poland by Judge Władysław Bednarz of the Łódź District Court ( Sąd Okręgowy w Łodzi ). Three convicted defendants were sentenced to death, including the camp deputy commandant Oberscharführer Walter Piller (wrongly, Filer); the gas van operator Hauptscharführer Hermann Gielow (Gilow), as well as Bruno Israel from Ordnungspolizei (Order Police), his sentence was later commuted to life. All three were members of
1328-649: The SS Special Detachment Kulmhof responsible for the extermination of Jews and non-Jews during the Holocaust in occupied Poland . In the years 1962–65, a dozen SS -men from Kulmhof were arraigned before the German court ( Landgericht ) in Bonn , RFN. They were charged with the murder of 180,000 Jews in the camp. The jury deliberations continued for three years, with sentences ranging from 13 months and 2 weeks to 13 years' imprisonment. Half of
1411-638: The SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Bothmann who had vanished. Both men were later found to have committed suicide. Judge Władysław Bednarz, assisted by the Deputy Recording Clerk, heard testimonies of key witnesses including Szymon (Simon) Srebrnik (age fifteen), who survived being shot in the head during the Germans' last execution of Jews at the camp, and Michał (Mordechaï) Podchlebnik , who escaped in 1942 into
1494-547: The Schlosslager (manor-house camp) and the Waldlager (forest camp). On the grounds of the estate was a large two-story brick country house 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
1577-489: The Sonderkommando Kulmhof ... I took part in the escorting of the transports. When Jews asked where they were being taken, I answered... they were going to work. The Jews generally believed it and behaved peacefully... They were given soap, unless they had their own. They were told they would get towels at the bath-house. Then all of them, both men and women were herded into a corral at the exit of which there
1660-519: The Łódź Ghetto before May 1942. One of the sisters of author Franz Kafka , Valli Kafka (born 1890), was murdered with them before mid-September. 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
1743-582: The 1962 trial in Bonn was 180,000 with 152,000 as the lowest acceptable number. The first Chełmno trial in Poland established many critical details from the camp history, but also revealed the operation of mobile gas chambers , which used exhaust fumes as the killing agent, diverted into sheet metal-lined vans. The names of SS officials and commanders at the camp were established, including the SS-Hauptsturmführer Herbert Lange and
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#17327839112391826-463: The Germans closed the Chełmno killing centre, while Operation Reinhard 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
1909-466: 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 ,
1992-403: 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
2075-504: 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 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
2158-558: 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. 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. The German SS staff selected young Jewish prisoners from incoming transports to join
2241-539: 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 , Poland. In addition to being included in
2324-463: 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 ). 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
2407-525: 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 Kulmhof Museum of Martyrdom [ pl ] gives the figure of around 200,000, the vast majority of whom were Jews of west-central Poland, along with Romani people from
2490-575: The aforementioned survivors. 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 in March 1942 and deposited their testimonies with Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau. Widawski spoke with Rabbi Lau as well as some members of
2573-548: The camp Sonderkommando , 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
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2656-452: The camp Sonderkommando . Mania had been originally imprisoned after being accused of attempting to poison a German. These eight prisoners has previously worked at a sonderkommando at Fort VII prison where they would dispose of dead prisoners. The men were then transferred to Chełmno after being selected by Herbert Lange Fifty-six years after the end of World War II, he was convicted as an accessory to murder. His investigation, begun in 1956,
2739-467: The camp authorities bought a bone-crushing machine ( Knochenmühle ) from Schriever and Co. in Hamburg to speed up the process. On June 23, 1944 , 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, the last ghetto in occupied Poland to produce war supplies for
2822-405: 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,
2905-430: The camp had been essentially eradicated by the SS , along with most traces of the mass murder. Truckloads of ashes of its victims were dumped in the Warta river daily, the "palace" was blown up with rubble removed to foundations, mobile gas-chambers and loot were driven back to Berlin, written records were destroyed, including train departure records. There was nothing to see for the commissars, or draw interest. Some of
2988-473: The camp were the Jewish and Romani populations of Koło , Dąbie , Sompolno , Kłodawa , Babiak , Izbica Kujawska , 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 ( German : Landkreis Warthbrücken ) to Koło by rail with the last stop in Powiercie . Using whips,
3071-486: 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
3154-597: 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. According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia , a total of seven Jews from the burial Sonderkommando 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
3237-605: The chassis had floor openings – about 60 mm (2.4 in) 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,
3320-552: 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. As soon as the ramp had been erected in the castle, people started arriving in Kulmhof from Litzmannstadt ( Łódź ) in lorries... The people were told that they had to take
3403-443: 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 murdered in the camp, which would make it the fifth deadliest extermination camp, after Auschwitz , Treblinka , Bełżec , and Sobibór . However,
Chełmno trials - Misplaced Pages Continue
3486-535: The defendants were cleared of all charges and released by Germany. After liberation by the Soviet Army, the new government of Poland began its official investigation into the Chełmno war crimes on May 24, 1945. Although most Germans fled, Piller and Gielow were soon captured by the Soviets and brought back. Notably, the trial of Holocaust perpetrators from Chełmno was unlike any other war-crimes trial, because
3569-546: The direction of Grabów town. On my way I stopped at some peasant’s cottages (I do not know his name). He gave me some food and a hat, shaved me and showed the way. In Grabów I met Winer... The second survivor from the Jewish Sonderkommando , Szymon Srebrnik , was from Łódź and 15 years old at the end of the war. He testified on June 29, 1945 in Koło ; he was not under oath, although informed of criminal liability for
3652-417: The early postwar years because he did not testify at trials of camp personnel. Five escaped during the winter of 1942, including Mordechaï Podchlebnik , Milnak Meyer, Abraham Tauber, Abram Roj and Szlama Ber Winer (Szlamek Bajler) whose identity was recognized also as Yakov or Jacob Grojanowski . Mordechaï Zurawski and Simon Srebnik escaped later. Srebnik was among Jews shot by the Germans two days before
3735-638: 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 ,
3818-474: 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 mallets 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,
3901-761: The extermination by mobile gas vans proved equally efficient following Operation Barbarossa 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 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. The rank and file of
3984-537: The extermination operation to SS-Standartenführer Ernst Damzog from Security Police in Poznań . Damzog supervised the camp's daily operations thereafter. The killing center consisted of a vacated manorial estate in the village of Chełmno on the Ner river, and a large forest clearing about 4 km (2.5 mi) 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
4067-562: 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-murder of Poles from Wartheland ( Wielkopolska ). Lange served with Einsatzgruppe VI during Operation Tannenberg . Already by mid-1940, Lange and his men were responsible for
4150-514: The final phase of the Chełmno extermination. He was accused of committing crimes against the Polish nation under the PKWN Decree of August 31, 1944 pertaining to Nazi War Criminals (the so-called Sierpniówka . This provided for the death penalty without direct appeal). The defendant claimed to be not guilty. Bruno Israel testified the following: In July or August 1944... I was assigned to
4233-464: The final phase of the camp operation, including 1944 deportations from Łódź. To circumvent the Nazi destruction of records and evidence, Judge Bednarz used Łódź ghetto records and estimates to arrive at the number of victims. Based on ghetto statistics together with testimonies, he estimated some 350,000 victims. He did not account for the period of camp inactivity. The range of estimated victims presented at
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#17327839112394316-499: 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. On January 16, 1942, the SS and police began deportations from
4399-493: The grid. 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
4482-527: The key evidence was mistakenly discarded in the trash in 1945 (i.e. over 5,000 pairs of damaged shoes from a destroyed synagogue in Koło ), or hauled away as usable materials, including wooden fencing and cremation grids; few people were aware of its importance. By comparison, other former death camps were overflowing with direct evidence of war-crimes, as in the case of the Majdanek trial decided several months before. Judge Bednarz soon ordered excavation of
4565-400: 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 . The SS-Sonderkommando "Lange"
4648-455: 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
4731-548: The murder of 180,000 Jews. A total of four trials were held. Later observers referred to at least one of them as a judicial farce . Genocide was not in the criminal code of Nazi Germany and the court ruled that it could not be applied retroactively. Depositions were not sufficient to secure convictions. There was little physical evidence remaining at the crime scene. No victims' bodies to examine: their ashes had been carried downriver and out to sea. The most severe penalties of 15 years were given to Gustav Laabs, SS Hauptscharführer ,
4814-858: 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
4897-448: The only two Jewish survivors of Chełmno, but he was in error. Some sources repeat that only Simon Srebnik and Mordechaï Podchlebnik survived the war but these are also in error. Podchlebnik is sometimes referred to as Michał (or Michael), in Polish and English versions of his name. Not all escapees have been identified in the postwar period. In 2002 Dr. Sara Roy of Harvard University wrote that her father, Abraham Roy, belonged to
4980-473: 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 and made
5063-472: The region , as well as foreign Jews from Hungary, Bohemia and Moravia , Germany, Luxembourg, and Austria transported to Chełmno via the Łódź Ghetto , 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 troops captured the town of Chełmno on January 17, 1945 . By then,
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#17327839112395146-553: The so-called SS Special Detachment Lange was made up of Gestapo , Criminal Police , and Order Police 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
5229-559: The surrounding forest from the burial Sonderkommando . Podchlebnik testified on June 9, 1945. He was at the camp for 10 days digging mass graves in January 1942 at the time of the Nazi Aktion Reinhard . The cremation process was implemented there a year later. I figured that about 1,000 people were gassed every day... which filled three to four metres of trench... I had been trying to persuade my inmates to escape... On
5312-445: 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 . 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
5395-516: 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
5478-544: 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 . The examination of evidence during the investigation
5561-517: The waste in a Schlosslager burn pit. About 24,200 spoons, 4,500 knives, and 2,500 forks were found, among pots, pans, eyeglasses and many other half-burned items in the debris. It was also known that most of the victims were Jews from the Łódź Ghetto , where chronicles of ghetto operations were found; in addition, non-Jewish Poles, Soviet prisoners, about 5,000 Gypsies, and whole transports of children had been deported to Chełmno where they were murdered. The SS Master Sergeant Walter Piller testified about
5644-403: The way to work, I noticed that one of the windows on the bus could be lowered. I told my companion Winer from Izbica... we were separated and I had to get into the truck... I cut the tarpaulin... and jumped out of the car. They started shooting at me but all bullets missed the target. Luckily the bus did not follow the truck... After two days, during which I did not eat anything... [ I ] headed in
5727-435: The women allowed to keep slips 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 . After about 5–10 minutes, the vans full of corpses were driven 4 km (2.5 mi) to
5810-413: 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
5893-577: The Łódź Ghetto lasting for two weeks. German officials with the aid of Ordnungspolizei 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, 10 km (6.2 mi) 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
5976-465: 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
6059-568: Was a Sonderwagen (the van)... The [dead] bodies were thrown into one of the [ Waldlager ] crematoriums. The furnaces were about 10 meters wide and about 5-6 meters long. They did not stick out above the ground level. They had no chimneys. Although Bruno Israel was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death, the Polish President Bolesław Bierut granted him clemency in September 1946, commuting his sentence to life. Israel
6142-478: Was about the same. The fire grate was made of narrow-gauge railroad railings... The capacity of one furnace was more or less the same as one van ... It took approximately one hour for the corpses to burn. Then a new pile of bodies were added... While the clothes were being sorted, high ranking SS-men came and chose something for themselves... On October 29/30, 1945, Judge Władysław Bednarz questioned German Oberwachtmeister Bruno Israel (born Bruno Koenig), employed at
6225-466: 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 was intercepted by the SS-Sonderkommando . Today, there is an obelisk to his memory erected at Chełmno on August 7, 1991 . Over 4,500, Czech Jews from Prague were sent to
6308-536: Was carried out by Judge Władysław Bednarz. The subsequent four trials, held in Bonn , began in 1962 and concluded three years later in 1965 in Cologne . Adolf Eichmann 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 , testified in both the Chelmno Guard and Eichmann trials. Nicknamed Spinnefix at
6391-550: 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. The SS and police began murdering victims at Chełmno on December 8, 1941 . The first people transported to
6474-520: Was killed in action on April 20, 1945, near Berlin. The second head of Chełmno, Hauptsturmführer Hans Bothmann who made substantial improvements to the killing method in the final phase of the camp operation, committed suicide in British custody in April 1946. The last person charged in connection with the crimes at Chełmno was a Pole, Henryk Mania . He was one of eight Polish prisoners who worked with
6557-410: Was released conditionally for five years in November 1958, and was never required to return to prison. Statutory death sentences were given to other two defendants, who were found guilty. Both Walter Piller and Hermann Gielow applied for a presidential pardon, which they were not granted. After a few years spent on death row , Walter Piller was executed on January 19, 1949. Herman Gielow was executed in
6640-561: Was renewed in 1991 by the Institute of National Remembrance . He was tried in a 2001 court case in Poznań . The collapse of several communist regimes and release of new records made it possible. Mania was found guilty of helping to load prisoners into gas-vans and collecting their watches and jewellery, which he also stole for himself. He was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment, with consideration given to his advanced age. Che%C5%82mno extermination camp Chełmno or Kulmhof
6723-439: Was set into the floor. The floor of the van had an opening which could be connected to the exhaust by means of a removable metal pipe. When the lorries were full of people, the double doors at the back were closed and the exhaust connected to the interior of the van. — SS-Scharführer Walter Burmeister, The Good Old Days In late February 1942, the secretary of the local Polish council in Chełmno, Stanisław Kaszyński (b. 1903),
6806-567: 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 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
6889-451: Was the first of Nazi Germany 's extermination camps and was situated 50 km (31 mi) 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
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