Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Holocaust Almanac: Chelmno: The First Operational Death Camp
Summary: Herbert Lange establishes first death camp at Chelmno
Reply-To: kmcvay@nizkor.almanac.bc.ca
Organization: The Nizkor Project, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: Chelmno,Lange

Archive/File: holocaust/poland/reinhard/chelmno chelmno.002
Last-modified: 1996/02/20 

   After the development of a mobile killing van (See URL 
   http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?camps/
   aktion.reinhard/belzec/belzec.11) in the fall of 1941, the 
   device was tested on Soviet POW's in Sachsenhausen, and found 
   completely satisfactory - three more trucks were converted, 
   and initially put to use in the Ukraine. There was, however, 
   an urgent need for them in the Wartheland. (Breitman, 202)

   "In July one of Eichmann's subordinates had raised the idea of
   finishing off the Jews in the Wartheland 'in humane fashion,' saying
   at that time that the idea seemed fantastic but was practical.<67> An
   extermination camp in the Wartheland could sweep Jews out of the Lodz
   ghetto. ...

   ...That fall Herbert Lange, commander of the unit that in 1940 had
   carried out gassings in vans using bottled carbon monoxide, rode
   around the Wartheland looking for a suitable site for a camp. He
   found an unoccupied castle along the New River, at a place called
   Chelmno, thirty-five miles northwest of Lodz, where a camp was
   established in late October or early November. Nearby was a forest
   where the gas trucks could operate discreetly. Gassings of Jews from
   the Wartheland were first carried out on December 8, 1941. Chelmno
   became, in effect, the first death camp in operation.<68>" (Breitman,
   202)

   Breitman's End Notes:

   <67> See Ho"pner to Echmann, 16 July 1941, reprinted in Lucjan
        Doboroszycki, ed., The Chronicles of the Lodz Ghetto 1941-1944.
        (New Haven, 1984), lii-liii
   <68> Hilberg, Destruction, I, 212-14

   (Request auschwitz reference.term to identify sources noted above)

                                Work Cited   

Breitman, Richard. The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final
Solution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991

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