Chełmno nad Nerem / Kulmhof am Ner

The first of the Nazi German mass killing centres was set up in Chełmno in the territory of Reichsgau Wartheland. The victims were killed with the use of gas vans. The camp comprised the buildings of a former manorial estate and was divided into two sections. The first, known as the “Schloss” (castle), was used for the reception and mass killing of victims; the SS quarters were also based there. The second section, known as “Waldlager” (Forest Camp), was located in Rzuchów Forest and was the site of mass graves; the corpses were later burned on grates there. A special unit, the “Sonderkommando Kulmhof”, was in charge of the administration and running of the camp. The victims were told they were being sent to work and that they first had to shower and be disinfected. They were taken in groups of 50 to the basement of the estate's main building and told to undress. The victims were then led via a ramp into a waiting gas van. The driver connected the exhaust pipe to an opening in the sealed freight area and turned on the engine. The gas fumes suffocated everybody inside within ten minutes. The van, now full of corpses, was driven to the forest, where a special unit of prisoners (Sonderkommando) opened the doors and threw the corpses into mass graves. Only two prisoners from this unit managed to escape and to provide testimony about the killing.

The first transport of Jews from nearby villages arrived in early December 1941. Deportations of Jews (including Czechs) from the Łódź ghetto began in the middle of January 1942. Eighty-eight children from Lidice were also murdered there. The gassing operations at Chełmno were reactivated in the summer of 1944 following the liquidation of the Łódź ghetto. The SS abandoned the camp on the night of 17 January 1945, shortly before the arrival of the Red Army. Although the precise number of victims is not known, historians estimate that more than 150,000 were murdered at Chełmno.