Chelmno's Death Camps

Isaacs 1
Madeline Isaacs
Davis
English 5th hour
24 January 2011
Chelmno
This death camp had a single purpose: to kill every Jew within a few hours of their arrival.
In 1940, thirty-three Jews lived in a village named Chelmno. Nazis came into their village and forced each one to flee. Over a year later, the village became the site of the first death camp, Chelmno. This camp was located in the Kolo County in central Poland. German occupation authorities named it Kulmhof. The entire Jewish populations from Warthegau were to be exterminated by poisonous gases. Warthegau included Wielkopolska and the Lodz Provinces. This location was perfect for a death camp because of its location by the road to Kolo Town, an adjacent forest, and an abandoned
palace. The Ner River was so close to the death camp, that it made a major obstacle for any potential victim runaways. Nearby railroads were also convenient to transport victims not only by truck, but by rail too.
Two groups of Nazis came to Chelmno to form a personnel. Those men were responsible to decimate the ill and handicapped, 25,000 of those people had tuberculosis. Chelmno was under the control of SS soldier, Gruppenfuhrer Wihelm Koppe.
Victims coming into Chelmno were chosen from labor camps.
Once the labor camps prisoners weren’t strong enough to complete tasks or if camps got overcrowded, they would be sent to an examination, then to Chelmno, depending on the results. Examiners would check each Jew to see how badly emaciated they were. Some would stuff scraps of fabric into their clothes or rub their cheeks to appear healthy to pass examinations and live. From time to time, Germans would send healthy and strong young men to Chelmno to confuse Jews about Chelmno being a death camp. From time to time, Germans would send healthy and strong young men to Chelmno to confuse Jews about Chelmno being a death
camp.

The Jewish prisoners who worked at Chelmno had a camp routine of waking up at 5:00A.M.
in the winter and 4:00A.M. in the summer. Prisoners might have a sip of coffee before assembling in a role-call formation. The roll-calls tended to last fro a couple hours while Nazis accounted each Jew. In any type of weather, even snow or hail, with or without shoes, several would collapse and die from exhaustion. After roll, they would receive a small amount of bread. Each day, the jews would work for 12 hours stacking bodies in mass graves or burning bodies in the furnace. At 7:00P.M., another roll-call would take place and if the number of Jews didn’t match with the morning’s roll-call, the wait would last even longer.
55,000 people were deported from the Lodz Ghetto to Chelmno. The Gypsies died of hunger and the few survivors were sent to be killed in Chelmno. By the end of summer 1942, all Warthegau ghettos had been exterminated.
As soon as Chelmno was in operation, thousands of Jew communities deported. Deportees were told they were going to Poland to be “resettled” in farms and labor camps. Their only destination was an immediate death at Chelmno. 13,000 Jews had already been gassed at Chelmno by February 28, 1942.
The first victims were allowed to take hand baggage only. The Jews from Kolo had already experienced brutal deportments to other labor camps. They thought the worst thing that could happen is another horrible labor camp. To confuse the victims even more, they had signs
pointing the wrong direction saying “To the Doctor” and “Dressing Rooms.”
December 8, 1941 was judged a success by Nazis. Each SS soldier were dressed as doctors with white lab coats and stethoscopes around their necks. They told all of the victims that they would hold their belongings while the victims “showered.” Polish prisoners marked the Jews’ luggage number next to their names to make the plan seem less suspicious. From a heated hall, Jews had to go in a room, forty at a time, to undress. To make them undress quickly, they were told they got new barracks or that transports would leave without them and they needed to hurry. They then followed the sign labeled “To the Bath House.” Since Chelmno had no permanent or stable gas chamber like other camps, they used mobile gas vans disguised with a red cross like Mercy’s. Each held up to 150 people and had a supply of carbon monoxide that would empty into the passenger compartment. When the victims were inside the vans, the doors were locked shut. The designated driver would connect the exhaust tube to the vent in the passenger’s compartment. The gas pedal was connected with the carbon monoxide. The driver would either step on the pedal slowly so death would be painless or step on it fast to bring death suddenly, asphyxiating them. At this point Chelmno had no crematorim, so when screams were head no more, the drivers went to a mass grave where Jewish prisoners stacked bodies neatly into the grave. One of the drivers, Gustav Laabs said:
“After about three kilometers, we drove into a clearing in the forest…Some of the work detail were then ordered to open the back doors. After this has been done, nine to ten bodies fell out of the van onto the ground.”
The pits were layered with calcium oxide to speed up the decomposition process. Mordechai Zurowski describes the new furnaces that were built:
“In the forest, there were two identical crematoriums. A layer of wood was set on fire, on which bodies were placed. Removing the ash was a hazardous job. No one would keep the job longer than three days, after which the worker was unable to continue and was killed. The furnaces were destroyed in August 1944 and January 1945.”
Mordechai Zurowski describes how he survived:
“On the night of January 17, 1945, the doors to the room in the Granary, where 20 Jews slept, were opened. Two SS men entered, Lez and Haase, shining their flashlights telling them to leave in fives. After the first five went out, we heard five shots. I was supposed to go with the third group of five. That’s when I grabbed the knife I had been hiding, knocked the flashlight out of Lenz’s hand. I had already ran away waving the knife when they started shooting at me from all sides. I was shot in the right leg, but managed to get away. After three kilometers, I noticed our building we lived in was on fire. Apparently, SS men set it on fire by accident.”
Some Jews succeeded in breaking open the sides of the van and would not be dead when the grave was reached. Chelmno was least productive of the death camps, even though 152,000 approximately people died there.
By September 1942, 55,000 adult Jews; 20,000 children Jews; 5,000 Gypsies were all gasses at Chelmno. In total, around 150,000-300,000 died.