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Old March 29th, 2020 #1
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Default Chełmno: A German Camp in History and Propaganda

Chełmno: A German Camp in History and Propaganda

By Carlo Mottogno

The alleged extermination camp at Chełmno (German: Kulmhof), a town in Poland in the region of Warta, called Warthegau by the Germans during the Second World War, is of major importance in orthodox Holocaust historiography, because it is claimed to be the first “death camp” built to serve the genocidal agenda of which the Germans are accused. Unlike other camps established afterwards, it is not said to have been equipped with stationary gas chambers, but with “Gaswagen” (gas vehicles), mobile gassing trucks which allegedly used engine-exhaust gas to kill human beings. The camp is said to have operated, with occasional periods of inactivity, in two phases: from 8 December 1941 – the day it opened – to 7 April 1943, and again from April 1944 to January 1945, killing a total of 152,000 to 340,000 people (Jäckel et al., vol. I, p. 280; see Chapter 11).

Documentation about it is almost nonexistent, which is why the picture outlined by orthodox Holocaust historiography is based almost exclusively on court records, which is to say, it is in fact based entirely on testimony. But even these data are rather limited: until 2007 they have only permitted the preparation of the odd leaflet by some Polish historians and a few articles by Western historians. As Israeli historian Shmuel Krakowski, who is currently the world’s leading Holocaust expert of the orthodox persuasion, wrote (Krakowski 1995, p. 55):

Research on the extermination camp at Chełmno upon Ner occupies a very small place in Holocaust historiography.”

His 2007 study of this camp, despite its stated intention to “expand the state of knowledge” and to “try to complete what has not been taken into account in the existing literature” (Krakowski 2007, p. 10) actually reflects the accumulated historical-documentary inconsistency of the orthodox Holocaust historiography about Chełmno. He reaffirms, among other things, that “sources on the Chełmno camp are extremely few, hence the insignificant number of publications on the topic” (ibid., p. 11). In the revisionist school, the most important historiographic contribution is the 2003 article by Ingrid Weckert “What Was Kulmhof/ Chełmno?”

In a paper setting out the conclusions of Holocaust historiography on the origins of the “gas van,” Mathias Beer notes that the first document on this issue dates from 26 March 1942, so that

the path of decisions leading to the construction and the operation/usage of these vans remains obscure.” (Beer 1987, p. 404; all subsequent page numbers from the German version unless stated otherwise)

Beer follows the technical development of a euthanasia “gas van” through the intermediate stage of the “Kaisers-Kaffee-Wagen” (“Kaiser’s Coffee Cart” (pp. 404f.):

Testimonies exist which report that during the evacuation of nursing homes for the mentally ill in Poland in 1939-1940, a hermetically sealed trailer was used with the words ‘Kaiser’s Coffee Shop’ [Kaisers-Kaffee-Geschäft] on it, which was towed by a tractor. In the trailer sick persons are said to have been killed with pure carbon monoxide (CO) injected from steel cylinders. Precisely because there are no documents, the provenance of this vehicle cannot be clarified. However, there are indications that allow us to answer the question whether there is a link between ‘Kaiser’s Coffee’ van and gas vans.”

It must be emphasized here that the claim regarding the use of carbon monoxide bottles for homicidal purposes is based exclusively on testimonies (note 14-18, p. 405), which moreover were made rather late. But since, as M. Beer rightly points out, justice and historiography pursue different ends, these legal testimonies have no historiographic value due to the total absence of documents. In fact, there is no documentary evidence:
  1. that the euthanasia centers were equipped with carbon-monoxide gas chambers,
  2. that cylinders of carbon monoxide were used for homicidal purposes by the euthanasia centers,
  3. and that the IG-Farben plant in Ludwigshafen supplied bottled carbon monoxide to the euthanasia centers.

In addition, there is no documentary evidence either that the KTI, the Institute for Criminological Technology, had experimented with killing procedures, that it had chosen carbon monoxide as a means of killing and that at the beginning of 1940, in the former prison of Brandenburg upon Havel, an experiment was carried out with a CO gas chamber.

The connection between the alleged “Kaiser’s Coffee” vans and the alleged CO gas chambers at the euthanasia institutions is in fact totally inconsistent, since there is no documentary evidence that either actually existed. Koppe’s letter quoted above neither demonstrates the existence of a “Kaiser’s Coffee” van nor its homicidal use. And strictly speaking it doesn’t demonstrate either that the Lange Sonderkommando had killed 1,558 persons, because it speaks simply of an evacuation from a transit camp.

The “gas vans” were allegedly created primarily to facilitate the homicidal activities of the Einsatzgruppen and were then deployed precisely for this purpose. According to Beer, of the six alleged “gas vans” of the “first series” (Diamond brand or some generic “small” van) converted in 1941, one was assigned to Einsatzgruppe C, one to Einsatzgruppe D, two to Chełmno (p. 413); also in 1942, thirty other “gas vans” of the second series (Saurer brand) were produced, 20 of which had already been delivered by April 1942 (p. 415), one to Chełmno, the rest apparently to the Einsatzgruppen.

It should be noted that the Einsatzgruppen have left an enormous quantity of documents on their activities. The “Ereignismeldungen UdSSR” (Information on Events in the USSR) amounted to “more than 2,900 typewritten pages” (Krausnik/Wilhelm 1981, p. 333). “There are 195 numbered reports ranging from 23 June 1941 to 24 April 1942 (ibid., pp. 650ff.). The “Meldungen aus den besetzten Ostgebieten” (Communications from the Occupied Eastern Territories) are 55 weekly reports numbered from 1 May 1942 to 23 May 1943 (ibid., pp. 652f.). Finally there are 11 “Tätigkeits-, Lageberichte der Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD in der UdSSR” (Reports on the Activities and Situation of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and Security Service in the USSR) that are dated from 31 July 1941 to 31 March 1942 (ibid., p. 654).

In spite of this huge volume of documents, in these reports “gas vans” never appear (with the one exception mentioned above) and no victim is ever listed as killed with a “gas van.” Apparently no one has addressed this enormous contradiction so far.

According to orthodox Holocaust historiography, the alleged extermination of the jews at Chełmno was carried out solely by means of “gas vans.”

The only document that links vehicles called “Spezialwagen” to Chełmno is a file memo (Vermerk) of 5 June 1942 apparently from the Referat II D 3a of the RSHA 8.29 This is said to be an official document drawn up in a very peculiar “‘unique-est’ copy” (“einzigste Ausfertigung”), although in German, the superlative of the adjective einzig does not exist (just as in English with its translation “unique”). It concerns “technical changes to the special vehicles [already] in service and which are [still] in production” and opens with an incomprehensible “for example”:

For example 97,000 were processed since December 1941 with 3 deployed vehicles without any defects in the vehicles becoming apparent.”

But the document in question contains so many anomalies and absurdities that Ingrid Weckert, Pierre Marais and Santiago Alvarez, who have researched it carefully, came to the conclusion that this is a back-dated fake.

Not a single document exists on the alleged Chełmno crematoria; all we know about them is a simple summary of evidence compiled by Judge Bednarz. And even this merely applies to the second phase of the camp, because there were no witnesses to the first phase. The crematoria of the camp’s second phase, however, are extensively described by several witnesses. The system described by the witnesses (particularly by M. Żurawski) is nothing other than the so-called Feist apparatus, a furnace for burning the carcasses of animals which have died of infectious diseases.

According to orthodox Holocaust historiography, Blobel began his cremation experiments at Chełmno in June 1942. By mid-September he had developed a cremation system so satisfactory that his “field incinerators” were visited by Rudolf Höss and considered a model for Auschwitz. Hence for the SS authorities their efficiency would have been indisputable. So when these authorities, in the second phase of the camp, are said to have had to reconstruct the two furnaces which had previously been dismantled, they apparently built the same furnace model as developed by Blobel.

I have stated above that, according to orthodox Holocaust historiography, the “field incinerators Aktion Reinhardt” had been built by Blobel in Chełmno after several attempts as a result of his cremation experiments in connection with the alleged Aktion 1005. The explanations I have provided in the previous sections allow the reader to judge to what extent this assumption is based on historical fact.

In 1945 the Chełmno camp was examined by Judge Bednarz, who briefly described the material findings. Further archeological surveys were conducted in 1951 and in 1986- 1987. The latter, sponsored by the District Museum, at that time headed by Łucja Nowak, were summarized as follows by Janusz Gulczyński. (1991, pp. 91-93)

In late November of 1988, the Koniń District Museum sent to the Institute of Forensic Medicine of the Medical Academy of Poznań a parcel containing four bags filled with earth mixed with ashes and bone fragments taken from the Chełmno camp. The Koniń Museum asked for a report on the samples sent in order to determine whether these fragments contained bones and human ashes and what their percentage was. The Institute of Forensic Medicine confirmed on 5 December 1988 that the bone fragments and ashes were human, adding that the percentage of residual bone in the material sent could be estimated “na kilka procent,”86 – at a few percent.

Let us assume that the soil analyzed by the Institute of Forensic Medicine of the Medical Academy of Poznań was taken from one of these pits. The analysis shows, however, that the soil contained only small proportions of human bone fragments and ashes. This, too, contradicts the thesis of mass cremation. The alleged cremation of 152,000 corpses has therefore no documentary basis and no support from material evidence.

The first official Polish surveys on the number of victims of Chełmno contradict each other. On 20 May 1945 the Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, a delegation of the Central Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, fixed this number at 1,300,000!

The data of the table in question, entitled “The extermination of the jews from the territory of Warthegau and Western Europe at Chełmno upon Ner during the period December 1941 to July 1944,” is given in Table 2.

Hence the number of alleged victims posited by today’s orthodox historians, including Polish historiography, is less than half the figure put forward by Judge Bednarz in 1946. In this context it is perhaps interesting to note that the order of magnitude of the future alleged total death toll of the Chełmno camp was already anticipated in late November 1942. At that time the clandestine Polish periodical Ziemie Zachodnie Rzeczypospolitej (Western Territory of the Republic) wrote (Chrzanowski 1985, p. 100):

From December 1941 to October of this year 250,000 to 300,000 Jews, mainly from the Łódź district and partly from Germany, have so far gone to this camp and have not returned.”

All that is left is to summarize the conclusions arising from this study.

1) The establishment of Chełmno camp fits perfectly into the National Socialist policy of deporting the jews to the east.

2) No documentary or material trace exists for the use of “gas vans” in this camp. The truck photographed by the Commission of Inquiry into the German crimes in Poland in the courtyard of the Ostrowski factory was used to disinfest clothing or to carry passengers.

3) There is no evidence for the first alleged systematic extermination of jews in the Warthegau, and no one can specify when or how it was perpetrated.

4) The first witness account about the alleged extermination at Chelmno, the “Szlamek Report,” is completely unreliable. Similarly unreliable and even contradictory are the witnesses of the postwar era.

5) Only one cremation furnace has been confirmed archeologically in the Chelmno camp. It would have taken almost nine years to cremate all the bodies of the alleged victims of homicidal gassings in that furnace. There are no material traces of the alleged mass cremation.

6) Rudolf Höss’s visit to the “field incinerators Aktion Reinhardt” had nothing to do with Chełmno.

7) The camp’s claimed death toll number is not based on any documentation. It was set to 1,300,000 by the Commission of Inquiry into the German Crimes in Poland, but later reduced to 340,000 by Judge Bednarz. Polish historiography today assumes a figure of about 152,000 victims, which in practice coincides with the number of jews who, according to the Korherr Report, were led “through the camps of the Warthegau… 145,301,” plus some 7,000 additional victims for the camp’s claimed second extermination phase in 1944.

8) The transports of jews sent to the Łódź ghetto included a high percentage of people unable to work (elderly and children), only some of whom were evacuated to make room for jews fit for work.

9) The Chełmno camp ceased operations in April 1943, which would be inexplicable if it really had been an extermination camp for the jews in the Warthegau, especially for the jews of the Łódź ghetto. This is all the more inexplicable because on 1 March 1944 4,495 children under 8 years of age and 392 elderly persons aged over 70 years were still alive in the ghetto.

10) Even more inexplicable, from the perspective of orthodox Holocaust historiography, is the reopening of the camp in April 1944. The claim that it had to exterminate the jews of the Łódź ghetto has no documentary support, and there is no evidence that the 10 Jewish transports evacuated from the ghetto “for labor” between June and July 1944 were gassed at, or even went to, Chełmno. In fact, the analysis of name lists of the deportations permits us to rule out this possibility.

11) No documentary evidence exists for the alleged extermination at Chełmno of gypsies from the Łódź ghetto.

12) No documentary evidence exists either for the alleged extermination at Chełmno of the children of Lidice.

13) The ultimate destiny of the jews who passed through the Chełmno camp was not the alleged “gas vans,” but the region of Pinsk, in particular the area of the Pripyat Marshes, and partly also the Baltic countries.

http://www.renegadetribune.com/chelm...nd-propaganda/

http://holocausthandbooks.com/dl/23-c.pdf
 
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