Artur Hojan - The Chelmno Death Camp - History, Biographies, Remembrance

Table of Contents

Dedicated to Artur Hojan and all of the victims of the Chemno Death Camp

For Zuzia, Freya and Lilli

He who comes here, does not walk away alive.

Inscription on the basement wall, in the Mansion at Chemno

In addition Hauptsturmfhrer Lange said to us that the orders to exterminate the Jews had been issued by Hitler and Himmler.

Kurt Mbius SS Sonderkommando Kulmhof

The gassed people were thrown out of the vehicle and piled like rubbish. They were grabbed either by their legs or hair. Above the grave, there were two men throwing the bodies into it. Inside the hole there were another two men putting the corpses in layers, faces down, in a way that one persons legs met another persons head.

Szlamek Bajler

Szlamek escaped from Chemno on January 19, 1942. He wrote a report on Chemno. He perished in the Beec death camp after being deported from Zamo in April 1942.

Chemno is still relatively unknown, even amongst esteemed historians of the Holocaust. The importance of Chemno in the development of the Holocaust is also not well understood and is certainly under researched.

Chemno was the first death camp on Reich territory, and played a hugely important role in the plans of Gauleiter Arthur Greiser to develop the Warthegau into the model district (Gau), cleansed of Jews and other undesirables. Greisers relationship with Himmler, the Reichsfhrer-SS, allowed him to take a much more pivotal role in the development and organization of the Holocaust in the Warthegau, including the death camp Chemno, than any other Nazi District leader. Greiser was a frequent visitor to Chemno and it was Greisers civil administration that organized the delivery of Jews to Chemno.

Jewish Ghettoization began first in the Warthegau in 1940, and d was the first large scale Jewish ghetto in Nazi occupied Europe. It was Greiser who sought approval from Adolf Hitler to kill the first 100,000 Jews of the Warthegau in 1941. There are direct links between the killing of mental patients between 1939 and 1941 in the Warthegau by Herbert Lange, and the development of Chemno the death camp, with Lange as its first Commandant. It was Lange who devised the methodology and the organization of the camp and it was he who recruited the personnel. Chemno was an integral part of the development of the racial policies that Greiser adopted for the Warthegau region.

Chemno was the first Nazi death camp when it began operations in early December 1941. In Chemno the gas vans were the first mass use of poison gas to kill Jews. Chemno was the only death camp to use gas vans as its primary method of killing. Because of its proximity to Berlin, Chemno became a testing ground for techniques for disposing the bodies of the dead victims. It was Colonel Paul Blobel under the auspices of Sonderkommando 1005, who developed the techniques in Chemno, later used in the Aktion Reinhardt camps of Beec, Sobibr and Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau and all over occupied Eastern Europe, to dig up and burn the bodies of untold numbers of victims of the Nazi regime.

These firsts and interconnections make Chemno and the killing of the Jews in the Warthegau almost unique in the annals of the Holocaust, but are also insightful in how the Holocaust itself developed. The number of histories published about the Chemno death camp number less than ten. Chriss book is therefore timely. As always Chris brings his own style to the difficulty of how to write about the Nazi death camps, while respecting the memory of the victims. His book covers the development of the camp and racial program, its operations, the key events, the accounts of the brave Jews who escaped from this hell, the detailed Roll of Remembrance, the perpetrators and the post-War trials, right up to the modern-day.

This book is also important for me, as Chris has graciously co-authored with my late colleague Artur Hojan. I worked with Artur for eight years in researching Nazi War Crimes in the Warthegau and beyond. Arturs knowledge, especially of the killing of mental patients in Nazi occupied Western Poland was exceptional. This led to Artur and I setting up the Tiergartenstrasse 4 Association in 2005 to research Nazi War Crimes. The Association is now established in Berlin, as Tiergarten4 Association e.v with a library and research center. Chris has quite rightly dedicated the book to our friend and colleague Artur and his memory.

I wish Chris the best of luck with this book on Chemno that is a worthy successor to his books on the Aktion Reinhardt camps and Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

Cameron Munro

Tiergarten4 Association e.v.

A crucial extension to our body of knowledge on the Holocaust, The Chemno Death Camp:History, Biographies, Remembrance is an authoritative and well-researched account of the construction, historical context and liquidation of Hitlers first death camp.

Drawing on detailed accounts from Jewish prisoners, perpetrator biographies and war crimes trials, Chris Webb and the late Artur Hojan paint a characteristically rich picture of the atrocities that happened at Chemno, as well as providing an impactful list of remembrance.

Going forward, this book is a great resource for modern historians and students of the Holocaust who wish to understand more about how Chemno sparked wider developments in the systematic murder of over six million Jews from 1941 to 1945.

Lest we forget!

Dr. William Allchorn is Associate Director of the Center for the Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR) and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Leeds.

Artur and Chris d 2005

This book chronologically tells the story of the Chemno death camp that the Nazis created in late 1941, in central Poland. Chemno was the first death camp to murder the Jews using gas, though not in static gas chambers, but using gas-vans. I am deeply indebted to the work of Kryzysztof Gorczyca and Zdzisaw Lorek, whose unpublished Chemno Day By Day account has been invaluable. Also Patrick Montagues book Chemno and the Holocaust published in 2012, has also been heavily quoted. There is simply too little published work and research in respect of the Chemno death camp and this book hopes to cover previously uncharted territory, with new accounts and new information. Also an invaluable source has been the book Chemno Witnesses Speak published by the District Museum in Konin, Poland.

In September 2005, Artur Hojan planned and guided Cameron Munro and myself on a visit to the former death camp in Chemno, and numerous places connected with the T4 Euthanasia Aktions, in what was called the Warthegau, during the War. We also visited major cities like Pozna and d and smaller places like Dbie, Grabow and Koo, all closely bound up with the history of the Chemno death camp. During this trip I had the good fortune to meet Zdzisaw Lorek in person, a real expert on Chemno.

Four years later another research trip to Chemno was undertaken: Artur again produced the trip schedule. Our group of intrepid Holocaust researchers consisted of Arthur Hojan, Cameron Munro, Professor Matthew Feldman, Chris Webb and our Polish driver Krystof.

We were based in Kutno, and toured a number of places near Chemno, such as Kroniewice, Sompolno, not previously visited, plus Dbie, Zawadka, d and Warsaw. I have included in this book some of the photographs taken on these two trips to provide the reader with a better understanding of how these places look now, and the horrors that once took place in this region of Poland.