PATRICK MONTAGUE. Che mno and the Holocaust: The History of Hitler's First Death Camp.

Abstract

Chełmno is one of the least researched Nazi extermination camps. Now Patrick Montague has finished twenty years of research and published an excellent monograph that explores the history of the camp from its beginning to the eradication of the traces of mass murder at its very end. Chełmno is enormously important for the history of Nazi mass murder, as it served as a prototype for Treblinka, Bełżec, and Sobibor. The camp was established near the town of Chełmno nad Nerem in late 1941 as “some quick working device” to “finish off the Jews [in the Warthegau] who are not employable” (p. 37). The know-how for mass murder with mobile gas vans was supplied by the Sonderkommando Lange, a special unit entrusted with the killing of mentally and physically handicapped people in the Warthegau since late 1939, which thus links the Holocaust to the first Nazi genocidal program. Like Auschwitz, Chełmno operated on territory incorporated into the German Reich, its guards lived and worked among not only Polish but also German neighbors, who thus became direct witnesses of the mass killing process that claimed more than 150,000 victims, mainly Jews but also Roma. In 1944, with the Red Army advancing westward, Jewish special commands under the supervision of German guards were forced to erase all traces of the camp before being killed as well. According to available documentation, only five prisoners managed to escape the horrors of Chełmno.