Chelmno was a Nazi extermination camp in Poland located near the river Ner, 37 M (60 KM) from Lodz. The village of Chelmno, in the district of Kolo, is situated 8 M (14 KM) from the town of Kolo. The main railway line from Lodz to Poznan runs through this town and is connected with the village of Chelmno via a branch line. Lodz, the second largest city in Poland, had a Jewish population of two hundred and two thousand in 1939. The Germans called it Kulmhof. The camp was used for the mass murder of Jews who lived in the Western Polish provinces which had been annexed by the Third Reich. First, closed trucks were used which killed the prisoners using exhaust fumes. Later, the Nazis introduced Zyklon B gas pellets. Detainees, who managed to escape from Chelmno, were the first to report that large numbers of Jews systematically were exterminated. Initially their horror stories were not believed.

       Little has been published about Chelmno despite its significance as it was the first extermination camp to become operational. Unlike Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, Chelmno was not part of Operation Reinhard. The Nazis began preparatory work at Chelmno two full months before the Wannsee Conference convened. This is considered to be a key milestone in the operational launching of the mass extermination program of the Jewish people in Europe. The extermination camp at Chelmno was a typical death-camp, a place designed exclusively for killing all who where brought there. The only inmates to be spared were a small group of workers selected by the Nazis for work associated with their criminal activity. The secret of Chelmno was kept well hidden because during German occupation only very few people in Poland and abroad ever knew of its existence or were aware of the hundreds of thousands of victims it claimed. The records show that more than 350.000 Jewish men, women, and children as well as Sinti and Roma were murdered at Chelmno before it was closed and destroyed in January 1945.

       Sonderkommando - Special commando Kulmhof (Chelmno) was made up of a party of only 20 SS-men. However, these 20 SSers were assisted by over 100 members of the regular German police. The latter mainly served as sentinels and guarded the neighboring roads. The Sonderkommando oversaw the extermination process in the death-camp as well as the work in the nearby forest where the corpses were burnt and buried.

       What follows are the names of some of the perpetrators, all German officers and N.C.O's who participated in the crimes against Jews and Gypsies in the Chelmno area. The first commandant of Chelmno (Kulmhof) was SS Sturmbannführer - SS-Major Herbert Lange. He was followed in March of 1942 by SS-Hauptsturmführer - SS-Captain Hans Bothmann. Successively, Bothmann had two assistants, Otto Platte and Willi Hiller.

SS-Untersturmführer - SS-2nd Lieutenant Walter Filer, deputy to Bothmann
SS-Untersturmführer - SS-2nd Lieutenant Alois Häfele, the 'specialist' in charge of all activities.
SS-Hauptscharführer - SS-Master Sergeant Albert Richter, division commander
SS-Hauptscharführer - SS-Master Sergeant Wilhelm Lenz, Chief woods commando
SS-Hauptscharführer - SS-Master Sergeant Johann Runge, Chief in charge of the crematoria
SS-Unterscharführer - SS-Sergeant Erich Kretschmer, deputy to Runge at the crematoria
SS-Hauptscharführer - SS-Master Sergeant Erwin Burstinger, in charge of the fuel and all the gas vans
SS-Hauptscharführer - SS-Master Sergeant Gustav Laabs, driver of the gas vans
SS-Hauptscharführer - SS-Master Sergeant Herman Gilow, driver of the gas vans
SS-Unterscharführer - SS-Sergeant Walter Burmeister, in charge of the gold
SS-Rottenführer -         SS-Corporal Wilhelm Gürlich, deputy to Burmeister, expert in gold
SS-Hauptscharführer - SS-Master Sergeant Schmidt, in charge of the dinning room

       In January 1945, when Soviet troops were approaching, SSers started the execution of the remaining Jewish workers, some of whom attacked the Germans, killing two of them. The SS burned the building in which the Jewish workers were locked. There are only two known Jewish survivors of this camp, Mordechai Podchlebnik and Simon Srebnik. During 1962/63, twelve members of the SS who had served as guards in Chelmno stood trial in Bonn, Germany. For their war crimes they were sentenced to prison terms ranging form 1 to 20 years. Considering the enormity of the crimes they were accused of having committed these sentences are extremely light and certainly out of tune with reality.