Polish Killing & Atrocity Centers

Also called "Kulmhof", the Concentration Camp of Chelmno was located about 35 miles outside of Lodz Poland; the base camp of which was a converted castle. Death tolls were over 340,000, including Jews, Roma & Sinti, and Poles, although more than 95% of the population was Jewish. Mass graves in the woods surround Chelmno, where many were interred after carbon monoxide poisoning in trucks with exhausts leading to sealed compartments. Those waiting killings were often detained first in a local church . Very few survivors remain.

Prisoners were taken from trains and loaded into trucks then to the camp where they were forced to disrobe and surrender clothing and valuables, which were given to the Nazi war effort. The castle contained a shower/wash room in the cellar, from which prisoners were loaded aboard one of 3 large trucks designed for gassings.

While the truck-gassings were not unique they had mostly been abandoned earlier in the war as had mass shootings because they were felt to 'demoralize' the soldiers and be exhausting to the killers. This commandant though, had been a central part of the misnamed "Euthanasia" programs which killed the mentally ill and developmentally delayed, and was one of the first mass killing 'experiments'. His choice of 3 large lorries to turn into instruments of murder, was therefore, no surprise. The camp was again reopened in 1944 till the end of the war to help in the killing of the Lodz Ghetto Liquidation. The Children of Lidice were murdered here in a barbaric act of retailiation for the death of Heydrich. Lidice .