109-669: SSTV may refer to: SS-TV ( SS-Totenkopfverbände ), the SS department responsible for administering the death camps Sistema Sandinista de Televisión , Nicaragua South Sudan Television Sur Sagar TV , Canada Slow-scan television , a picture transmission method Sun Siyam TV , a Maldivian television channel Submerged Shock Test Vehicle - weaponry test to discover Weapon-Induced (Near Miss) Shock, meaning shock motions (displacement) experienced by any part of weapon itself or its assembly, i.e. while testing of SLATACMS . Topics referred to by
218-532: A bath, that their clothes had to be disinfected and that they could hand in any valuable items beforehand to be registered. When they had undressed they were sent to the cellar of the castle and then along a passageway onto the ramp and from there into the gas-van. In the castle, there were signs marked "to the baths". The gas vans were large vans, about 4–5 m [13–16 ft] long, 2.2 m [7.2 ft] wide and 2 m [6.6 ft] high. The interior walls were lined with sheet metal. A wooden grille
327-554: A much smaller Powiercie station, just outside Chełmno. As round-ups in Łódź normally took place in the morning, it was usually late afternoon by the time Jews disembarked from the Holocaust trains in Powiercie. Therefore, they were marched to a disused mill at Zawadki some two kilometres distance where they spent the night. The mill building continued to be used after the railway repairs, if transports arrived late. The following morning
436-418: A new programme of mass incarceration of the so-called enemies of the state. Originally there were only wild camps in operation. Springing up in every town across Germany "like mushrooms after the rain" (Himmler's quote), the early camps utilized lockable spaces usually without infrastructure for permanent detention (i.e. engine rooms, brewery floors, storage facilities, cellars). Following the fall from power of
545-522: A result of the original doctrine of "no pity" which Eicke had instilled in his camp personnel as far back as 1934, together with the fact that the original Totenkopfstandarte had "trained" themselves. The Division's ineffectiveness in France, as well as its war crimes, can in part be explained by its personnel who were more thugs than soldiers. When first formed a total of 6,500 men from the SS-TV were transferred into
654-497: A separate formation called the Wachbattalion (guard battalion). The guard battalion commander was responsible for providing watch bills to man guard towers and oversaw security patrols outside the camp. The battalion was organized on typical military lines with companies, platoons, and squads. The battalion commander was subordinate directly to the camp commander. Concentration camps also had supply and medical personnel, attached to
763-525: A total of 340,000 men, women, and children. The Kulmhof Museum of Martyrdom [ pl ] gives the figure of around 200,000, the vast majority of whom were Jews of west-central Poland, along with Romani people from the region , as well as foreign Jews from Hungary, Bohemia and Moravia , Germany, Luxembourg, and Austria transported to Chełmno via the Łódź Ghetto , on top of the Soviet prisoners of war . The victims were murdered using gas vans . Chełmno
872-587: A translator released earlier from the Gestapo prison in Poznań . The victims were led to a large empty room and ordered to undress; their clothing stacked for disinfection. They were told that all hidden banknotes would be destroyed during steaming and needed to be taken out and handed over for safe-keeping. Occasionally they were met by a German officer dressed as a local squire with a Tyrolean hat , announcing that some of them would remain there. Wearing just underwear, with
981-537: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages SS-TV SS-Totenkopfverbände ( SS-TV ; lit. ' Death's Head Units ' ) was a major branch of the Nazi Party 's paramilitary Schutzstaffel (SS) organisation. It was responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps for Nazi Germany , among similar duties. It
1090-706: The Kommandant of the Dachau concentration camp . Eicke requested a permanent unit that would be subordinate only to him, and hence the SS-Wachverbände (guard units) were formed. Eicke began his infamous tenure by issuing new orders about the killing of inmates trying to escape ( Postenpflicht ). He developed the first Lagerordnung , a Nazi disciplinary and penal code regulating the system of extreme disciplinary sanctions for detainees. His rules were adopted by all concentration camps of Nazi Germany as of 1 January 1934. Eicke
1199-620: The Totenkopf Division and other units of the Waffen-SS . In the early days of the military camp service formation, the group's exact chain of command was contested since Eicke as Führer der Totenkopfverbände exercised personal control of the group but also, as it was considered an armed SS formation, authority over the armed units was claimed by the SS-Verfügungstruppe (SS-VT), which had been first formed in 1934 as combat troops for
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#17328589887681308-650: The Holocaust Encyclopedia , Mordechaï Zurawski is included as survivor in three other sources, each of which documents his testifying, along with Srebnik and Podchlebnik about his experience at Chełmno, at the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem . In addition, Srebnik testified in the Chelmno Guard Trials of 1962–63. The French director Claude Lanzmann included interviews with Srebnik and Podchlebnik in his documentary Shoah , referring to them as
1417-625: The Le Paradis massacre in 1940 during the Fall of France . On the Eastern Front , the mass shootings of Polish and Soviet civilians in Operation Barbarossa were the work of Einsatzgruppen mobile death squads and their subgroups called Einsatzkommando . These units were organized by Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich . After taking national power in 1933, the Nazi Party launched
1526-513: The Orpo police marched them toward the Warta river near Zawadka , where they were locked overnight in a mill, without food or water. The next morning, they were loaded onto lorries and taken to Chełmno. At "the palace", they were stripped of possessions, transferred to vans, and murdered with exhaust fumes on the way to burial pits in the forest. The daily average for the camp was about six to nine van-loads of
1635-563: The SS Special Detachment. Periodically, the SS executed the members of the Jewish special detachment and replaced them with workers selected from recent transports. The SS held jumping contests and races among the prisoners, who were shackled with chains on their ankles, to deem who was fit to continue working. The losers of such contests were shot. The early killing process carried out by
1744-466: The SS and police began deporting the remaining inhabitants of the Łódź ghetto to Auschwitz-Birkenau . In September 1944, the SS brought in a new Commando 1005 of Jewish prisoners from outside the Wartheland District to exhume and cremate remaining corpses and to remove evidence of the mass murder operations. A month later, the SS executed about half of the 80-man detachment after most of
1853-594: The SS murdered at least 152,000–180,000 people at Chełmno between December 1941 and March 1943, and from June 23, 1944 , until the Soviet advance. Note: a 1946–47 report by the Central Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland [ pl ] placed the number closer to 340,000 based on a statistical approach, as the camp authorities had destroyed all waybills in an effort to hide their actions. After
1962-536: The Schlosslager (manor-house camp) and the Waldlager (forest camp). On the grounds of the estate was a large two-story brick country house called "the palace". Its rooms were adapted to use as the reception offices, including space for the victims to undress and to give up their valuables. The SS and police staff and guards were housed in other buildings in the town. The Germans had a high wooden fence built around
2071-793: The Totenkopf Division. Over the course of the savage fighting in the East, the Division was twice effectively destroyed and recreated. Very few of the men who were part of the 1939 Standarten in Poland were still in the Division by 1945. After the close of the Battle of France , the SS-Verfügungstruppe was officially renamed the Waffen-SS in a speech made by Hitler in July 1940. Himmler also gained approval for
2180-668: The Totenkopf men could escape. However, many were arrested by the Allies and stood trial for war crimes at Nuremberg between 1946 and 1949. "Immediately after their seizure by the Russians on May 9–10, 1945 – wrote Sydnor – the officers and men in the Totenkopf Division were transported to several detention camps inside the Soviet Union. Within six months of the end of the war, many prominent SSTK officers, including Becker , disappeared, most likely
2289-586: The Waffen-SS Sig-runes. The camp system expanded greatly after the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, when large numbers of Soviet soldiers were captured. Some were transferred to the camps, where their inhumane treatment became normal. The Totenkopf Division still had close ties to the camp service and its members continued to wear the Death's-Head as their unit insignia. They were known for brutal tactics,
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#17328589887682398-515: The Łódź Ghetto before May 1942. One of the sisters of author Franz Kafka , Valli Kafka (born 1890), was murdered with them before mid-September. During the first five weeks, the murder victims came only from the nearby areas. On reaching their final destination before "transport" to Germany and Austria, the Jews disembarked in the courtyard of the Schlosslager manor where the SS men wearing white coats and pretending to be medics waited for them with
2507-750: The Dachau camp model. In 1935, as the concentration camp system within Germany expanded, groups of camps were organized into Wachsturmbanne (battalions) under the office of the Inspector of Concentration Camps who answered directly to the SS headquarters office and Heinrich Himmler . When the SS-Totenkopfverbände were formally established in March 1936, the group was organized into six Wachtruppen situated at each of Germany's major concentration camps. In April 1936, Eicke
2616-414: The Division in France, and transferred the Totenkopf Division, the independent TK-Standarten , and their reserve and replacement system to the newly formed Waffen-SS high command. In February 1941 the Totenkopf designation was removed from the names of all units other than the Totenkopf Division and the camp Totenkopfwachsturmbanne , and their personnel exchanged the Death's-Head collar insignia for
2725-856: The German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Eicke's SS-TV field forces numbered four infantry regiments and a cavalry regiment, plus two battalions placed in Free City of Danzig . The SS-TV role in the attack on Poland was not military in spite of close proximity to combat. "Their military capabilities were employed instead in terrorizing the civilian population through acts that included hunting down straggling Polish soldiers, confiscating agricultural produce and livestock, and torturing and murdering large numbers of Polish political leaders, aristocrats, businessmen, priests, intellectuals, and Jews." Eicke's three regiments, Oberbayern, Brandenburg and Thuringen, were reformed as
2834-555: The German military, the Nazi Party, and the Volkssturm . Such personnel wore a distinctive twin swastika collar patch and served as camp guard and administrative personnel until the surrender of Germany. The SS, individually and collectively, benefited financially from the Holocaust. Slave labour at the camps was sold to private companies, or used to run lucrative SS-run industries, while
2943-513: The Germans closed the Chełmno killing centre, while Operation Reinhard was still underway elsewhere. Other death camps had faster methods of murdering and incinerating people. Chełmno was not a part of Reinhard. The SS ordered complete demolition of Schlosslager, along with the manor house, which was levelled. To hide the evidence of the SS -committed war crimes, from 1943 onward, the Germans ordered
3052-403: The Germans. The Special Detachment "Bothmann" returned to the forest and resumed murdering victims at a smaller camp, consisting of brand new wooden barracks along with new crematory pyres. First, the victims were taken to the desecrated church in Chełmno where they spent the night if necessary, and left their bundles behind on the way to the reception area. They were driven to the forest, where
3161-499: The Governor of Reichsgau Wartheland . In a letter to Himmler dated May 30, 1942 , Greiser referred to an authorization he had received from him and Reinhard Heydrich , stating that the clandestine program of murdering 100,000 Polish Jews, about one-third of the total Jewish population of Wartheland , was expected to be carried out soon. Greiser's plan was based on the German government's decision of October 1941 to deport German Jews to
3270-530: The Inspector of Concentration Camps a subordinate to the Chief of the WVHA. By 1941, prior to the " Final Solution ", the concentration camps run by SS-TV, both in Germany and across occupied territories, grew into a massive system of institutionalized forced labour for the SS. The concentration camp personnel began to arrive from the front-line SS formations upon medical discharge. Attack dogs were introduced to compensate for
3379-551: The Jews were transported from Zawadki by truck, in numbers which could be easily controlled at their destination. The victims were "processed" immediately upon arrival at the manor-house. Beginning in late July 1942, the victims were brought to the camp directly from Powiercie after the regular railway line linking Koło with Dąbie was restored; and the bridge over the Rgilewka River had been repaired. The German SS staff selected young Jewish prisoners from incoming transports to join
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3488-530: The Nazi Party. But at this time, Himmler and Eicke envisioned the armed SS-VT as a force for internal "police and security operations". Later by 1938, it became clear that the SS-VT troops were to be used for front-line "purposes", as well. Eicke in his role as the commander of the SS-TV, continued to reorganize the camp system by dismantling smaller camps. By August 1937 only Dachau, Sachsenhausen , Buchenwald and Ravensbrück remained in Germany. In 1938 Eicke oversaw
3597-483: The Russians entered Chełmno, but he survived. Winer wrote under pseudonym Grojanowski about the operations of the camp in his Grojanowski Report , but he was rounded up with thousands of others and murdered in the gas chamber of Bełżec extermination camp . In June 1945, both Podchlebnik and Srebnik (then age fifteen), testified at the Chełmno trials of camp personnel in Łódź , Poland. In addition to being included in
3706-415: The SS from December 8, 1941, until mid-January 1942, was intended to murder Jews from all nearby towns and villages, which were slated for German colonization ( Lebensraum ). From mid-January 1942, the SS and Order Police began transporting Jews in crowded freight and passenger trains from Łódź. By then, Jews had also been deported to Łódź from Germany, Bohemia-Moravia , and Luxembourg, and were included in
3815-456: The SS-TV and camp operations. This kept control of the camps out of the hands of the Gestapo or the SD. By April 1938, the SS-TV had four regiments of three storm battalions with three infantry companies, one machine gun company and medical, communication and transportation units. On 17 August 1938 Hitler decreed, at Himmler's request, the SS-TV to be the official reserve for the SS-VT; this would over
3924-490: The SS-TV and soldiers from the SS-Heimwehr "Danzig . Members of other SS militias were transferred into the division in early 1940; these units had been involved in multiple massacres of Polish civilians, political leaders and prisoners of war. From fall 1939 to spring 1940 a massive recruitment effort in Germany raised no fewer than twelve new TK-Standarten (four times the size of the SS-Verfügungstruppe ) in anticipation of
4033-712: The SS-TV atrocities, unaware that they were planned years in advance by the Central Unit II P-Poland under Heydrich who himself coordinated secret extermination actions including Operation Tannenberg and the Intelligenzaktion both targeting more than 61,000 members of Polish elites during the opening stages of World War II. At the beginning of war in Europe, the SS forces consisted of roughly 250,000 servicemen spread out across multiple branches, with transferable ranks and service records from police regiments and
4142-477: The SS. In his role as the Concentration Camps Inspector, Eicke began a large reorganisation of the camps in 1935. The smaller camps were dismantled. Dachau concentration camp remained, then personnel from Dachau went on to work at Sachsenhausen and Oranienburg , where Eicke established his central office. In 1935, Dachau became the training center for the concentration camps service. Many of
4251-718: The SS. In 1942 Glücks was increasingly involved in the administration of the Endlösung , supplying personnel to assist in Aktion Reinhardt (although the death camps of Belzec , Treblinka and Sobibor were administered by SS-und Polizei-führer Odilo Globocnik of the General Government ). In July 1942, Glücks met Himmler to discuss medical experiments on concentration camp inmates. All extermination orders were issued from Glücks' office to SS-TV commands throughout Nazi Germany and occupied Europe. He specifically authorized
4360-875: The Waffen-SS to form its own high command, the Kommandoamt der Waffen-SS within the SS-Führungshauptamt , which was created in August 1940. It received command of the SS-Verfügungstruppe (the Leibstandarte and the SS-Verfügungs-Division , renamed Reich ) and the armed SS-TV regiments (the Totenkopf-Division together with the independent Totenkopf-Standarten ). The Waffen-SS was greatly expanded and allowed to recruit volunteers from conquered territories from
4469-523: The aforementioned survivors. She said that her father was the escapee recognized by the Holocaust Encyclopedia as Abram Roj, although she was mistaken about their total number. Two other survivors of Chełmno include Yitzhak Justman and Yerachmiel Yisrael Widawski who escaped together from the forest burial commando in the winter of 1942. They arrived at Piotrków Trybunalski Ghetto in March 1942 and deposited their testimonies with Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau. Widawski spoke with Rabbi Lau as well as some members of
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4578-523: The army had resisted. "the object of war is . . . physically to destroy the enemy. That is why I have prepared, for the moment only in the East, my ‘Death's Head’ formations with orders to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language . Only in this way can we obtain the living space we need." — Hitler 's speech to officers of the Wehrmacht High Command at Obersalzberg , 22 August 1939 During
4687-519: The army. Himmler's military formations at this time comprised several subgroups, including the SS-Verfügungstruppe , which would become the basis of the Waffen-SS . Hitler approved further expansion of the armed SS formations. By October 1939, a new SS military division the SS-Totenkopf was formed. The Totenkopf was initially formed from concentration camp guards of the Standarten (regiments) of
4796-544: The building of new camps in Austria following the Anschluss , such as Mauthausen . Eicke's reorganization and the introduction of forced labor made the camps one of the SS's most powerful tools, but it earned him the enmity of Gestapo and Sicherheitsdienst (SD) chief, Reinhard Heydrich , who wanted to take over control of the concentration camp system. Himmler wanted to keep a separation of power, so Eicke remained in command of
4905-548: The camp Sonderkommando , a special unit of 50 to 60 men deployed at the forest burial camp. They removed corpses from the gas-vans and placed them in mass graves. The large trenches were quickly filled, but the smell of decomposing bodies began to permeate the surrounding countryside including nearby villages. In the spring of 1942, the SS ordered burning of the bodies in the forest. The bodies were cremated on open air grids constructed of concrete slabs and rail tracks; pipes were used for air ducts, and long ash pans were built below
5014-462: The camp authorities bought a bone-crushing machine ( Knochenmühle ) from Schriever and Co. in Hamburg to speed up the process. On June 23, 1944 , in spite of earlier demolition of the palace , the SS renewed gassing operations at Chełmno in order to complete the annihilation of the remaining 70,000 Jewish prisoners of the ghetto in Łódź, the last ghetto in occupied Poland to produce war supplies for
5123-405: The camp authorities had constructed two fenced-out barracks for undressing before "shower", and two new open-air cremation pits, further up. The SS and police guarded the victims as they took off their clothes and gave up valuables before entering gas-vans. In this final phase of the camp operation, some 25,000 Jews were murdered. Their bodies were burned immediately after death. From mid-July 1944,
5232-516: The camp labour after 1941. During the war, almost half of the concentration camp officers served with the Waffen-SS combat divisions, including the Leibstandarte , Das Reich , Wiking, the Nord Division, and Totenkopf . Some concentration camp officers served as division commanders in the Waffen-SS . By October 1944 the Waffen-SS membership reached 800,000 and up to 910,000 men. Within
5341-603: The camp personnel trials conducted in 1962–65 by West Germany . Chełmno nad Nerem is a village in Poland , annexed to Nazi Germany in 1939 and renamed Kulmhof during German occupation . As the Nazis themselves exclusively referred to the camp as "Kulmhof", the name "Chełmno extermination camp" is not historically accurate, with its use perhaps deriving from the Main Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland shortly after
5450-468: The camp were the Jewish and Romani populations of Koło , Dąbie , Sompolno , Kłodawa , Babiak , Izbica Kujawska , Bugaj , Nowiny Brdowskie and Kowale Pańskie . A total of 3,830 Jews and around 4,000 Romani were murdered by gas before February 1942. The victims were brought from all over Koło County ( German : Landkreis Warthbrücken ) to Koło by rail with the last stop in Powiercie . Using whips,
5559-482: The camp's murder techniques. The change was prompted by two incidents in March and April of that year. First, the gas-van broke down on the highway while full of living victims. Many passers-by heard their loud cries. Soon after that, the Saurer van exploded while the driver was revving its engine at the loading ramp; the gassing compartment was full of living Jews. The explosion blew off the locked back door, and badly burned
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#17328589887685668-637: The camp, Srebnik was recognised by the Chelmno Guards only by this moniker. Walter Burmeister, a gas-van driver (not to be confused with the camp's SS-Unterscharfuehrer Walter Burmeister), testified in Bonn in 1967. According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia , a total of seven Jews from the burial Sonderkommando escaped from the Waldlager . Determining the identities of the few survivors of Chełmno had presented ambiguity because records use different versions of their names. One survivor may not have been recorded in
5777-569: The camps themselves, there existed a hierarchy of camp titles and positions which were unique only to the camp service. Each camp was commanded by a Kommandant , sometimes referred to as Lagerkommandant , who was assisted by a camp adjutant and command staff. The prison barracks within the camp were supervised by a Rapportführer who was responsible for daily roll call and the camp daily schedule. The individual prisoner barracks were overseen by junior SS-NCOs called Blockführer who, in turn had one to two squads of SS soldiers responsible for overseeing
5886-549: The camps' official closure. Camps were meticulously destroyed, sick prisoners were shot and others were marched on death marches away from the advancing Allies . The SS-TV were also instrumental in the execution of hundreds of political prisoners to prevent their liberation. By April 1945 many SS-TV had left their posts. Due to their notoriety, some removed their death head insignia to hide their identities. Camp duties were increasingly turned over to so-called "Auxiliary-SS", soldiers and civilians conscripted as camp guards so that
5995-478: The camps. In addition to the regular SS personnel assigned to a concentration camp, there also existed a prisoner system of trustees known as Kapos who performed a wide variety of duties from administration to overseeing other groups of prisoners. The Sonderkommandos were special groups of Jewish prisoners who assisted in the extermination camps with the disposal of bodies and other tasks. The duty of actually gassing prisoners was, however, always carried out by
6104-605: The chassis had floor openings – about 60 mm (2.4 in) in diameter – with metal pipes welded below, into which the engine exhaust was directed. Victims generally suffocated to death, with their "bodies thrown out blue, wet with sweat and urine, the legs covered with excrement and menstrual blood". Drivers of gas vans also heard victims screaming and knocking on the walls. The SS had first used pure carbon monoxide from steel cylinders to murder mental patients in extermination hospitals of Action T4, and therefore had considerable knowledge of its efficacy. For all practical purposes,
6213-580: The coming attack on France. Both Eicke personally and his Totenkopf Division performed poorly during Fall Gelb therefore Himmler resolved to curb his decisions which had spurred a conflict with Hausser and Dietrich ; especially his designation of TK-Standarten as reserves for his Totenkopf Division alone, and the fact that the SS-Verfügungstruppe military supplies were stored at Eicke's concentration camps. On 15 August 1940 Himmler dissolved Eicke's Inspectorate of SS-Totenkopfstandarten using as justification several well-publicized atrocities committed by
6322-431: The cost of prisoner upkeep was minimal. Himmler intended to make concentration camps into a profitable industry for the financial benefit of the SS. Wartime labour shortages meant that the concentration camps ended up as a significant labour source for all sectors of the German economy. The property of murdered Jews was stolen and auctioned off to the German public. Individual personnel at the camps often embezzled some of
6431-451: The course of the war lead to a constant flux of men between the Waffen-SS and the concentration camps. Himmler's intention was simply to expand his private army by using the SS-TV (as well as the police, which he also controlled) as a manpower pool. Himmler sought and obtained a further decree, issued on 18 May 1939, which authorized the expansion of the SS-TV to 50,000 men, and directed the army to provide it with military equipment, something
6540-497: The dead. The drivers used gas-masks . From January 1942, the transports included hundreds of Poles and Soviet prisoners of war. In addition, they included over 10,000 Jews from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Moravia and Luxembourg, who had first been deported to the ghetto in Łódź and subsisted there already for weeks. As soon as the ramp had been erected in the castle, people started arriving in Kulmhof from Litzmannstadt ( Łódź ) in lorries... The people were told that they had to take
6649-417: The early postwar years because he did not testify at trials of camp personnel. Five escaped during the winter of 1942, including Mordechaï Podchlebnik , Milnak Meyer, Abraham Tauber, Abram Roj and Szlama Ber Winer (Szlamek Bajler) whose identity was recognized also as Yakov or Jacob Grojanowski . Mordechaï Zurawski and Simon Srebnik escaped later. Srebnik was among Jews shot by the Germans two days before
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#17328589887686758-600: The early recruits came from the ranks of the SA and Allgemeine SS . Senior roles were filled by personnel from the Ordnungspolizei , the police who maintained order. On 29 March 1936, concentration camp guards and administration units were officially designated as the SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV). In the summer of 1937, Buchenwald became operational, followed by Ravensbrück (near Lichtenburg ) in May 1939. There were other new camps in Austria, such as Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp , which opened in 1938. All SS camps' regulations, both for guards and prisoners, followed
6867-425: The effectiveness of industrial-scale murder by exhaust fumes, called a secret meeting of German officials to undertake the European-wide Final Solution to the Jewish Question under the pretext of "resettlement". The use of the killing centre at Chełmno for the mass murder of rapidly growing number of Jews deported to the Łódź Ghetto ("Special Handling", the Sonderbehandlung ) was initiated by Arthur Greiser ,
6976-417: The ethnic German and Germanic populations. After Eicke was reassigned to combat duty, his Chief of Staff SS- Gruppenführer Richard Glücks was appointed the new Concentration Camps Inspectorate (CCI) or IKL ( Inspektion der Konzentrationslager ) chief by Himmler. By 1940, the CCI came under the control of the Verwaltung und Wirtschaftshauptamt Hauptamt (VuWHA; Administration and Business office) which
7085-418: The exhumation of all remains and burning of bodies in open-air cremation pits by a unit of Sonderkommando 1005 . The bones were crushed on cement with mallets and added to the ashes. These were transported every night in sacks made of blankets to river Warta (or to the Ner River ) on the other side of Zawadka, where they were dumped into the water from a bridge and from a flat-bottomed boat. Eventually,
7194-578: The extermination by mobile gas vans proved equally efficient following Operation Barbarossa of 1941. In the newly occupied territories, the gas vans were used to murder mental patients as well as Jews in the extermination ghettos. By employing just three vans on the Eastern Front (the Opel-Blitz and the larger Saurerwagen ), without any faults occurring in the vehicles, the Einsatzgruppen were able to murder 97,000 captives in less than six months between December 1941 and June 1942. The SS relayed urgent requests to Berlin for more vans. The rank and file of
7303-489: The extermination operation to SS-Standartenführer Ernst Damzog from Security Police in Poznań . Damzog supervised the camp's daily operations thereafter. The killing center consisted of a vacated manorial estate in the village of Chełmno on the Ner river, and a large forest clearing about 4 km (2.5 mi) northwest of Chełmno, off the road to Koło town with a sizable Jewish population which had been previously ghettoized. The two sites were known respectively as
7412-488: The facility was selected personally by Ernst Damzog , Commander of Security Police and SD from headquarters in occupied Poznań (Posen). Damzog formed the SS-Sonderkommando Lange (special detachment), and appointed Herbert Lange the first camp commandant because of his experience in the mass-murder of Poles from Wartheland ( Wielkopolska ). Lange served with Einsatzgruppe VI during Operation Tannenberg . Already by mid-1940, Lange and his men were responsible for
7521-410: The first Einsatzgruppen ; the Oberbayern and the Thuringen (EG II and EG z. B.V) followed the Tenth Army in Upper Silesia ; the Brandenburg (EG III) followed the Eight Army across Warthegau . The behavior of these Standarten in Poland elicited some protests from officers of the army, including 8th Army commander Johannes Blaskowitz who wrote a memorandum to Walther von Brauchitsch detailing
7630-439: The forest Waldlager camp. The vans were unloaded to excavated mass graves, and cleaned by the Waldkommando before returning to the manor house. Scharführer Walter Burmeister, a gas-van driver, made sure his own vehicle "would be cleaned of the excretions of the people that had died in it. Afterwards, it would once again be used for gassing" at the loading dock. On January 16, 1942, the SS and police began deportations from
7739-420: The grid. Later, the Jewish Sonderkommando had to exhume the mass graves and burn the previously interred bodies. In addition, they sorted the clothing of the victims, and cleaned the excrement and blood from the vans. A small detachment of about 15 Jews worked at the manor house, sorting and packing the belongings of the victims. Between eight and ten skilled craftsmen worked there to produce or repair goods for
7848-526: The headquarters office under the camp commander, as well as a security office with Gestapo and Kripo personnel attached to the camp. Heydrich had been successful in getting control over the "political departments" of the camps. These security personnel were under direct command of Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo) commanders until September 1939 and thereafter, the Reich Security Main Office ( Reichssicherheitshauptamt , RSHA) commanders independent of
7957-575: The inmates in an atmosphere of controlled, disciplined cruelty. This environment of formalized brutality influenced some of the SS-TV's most infamous commandants including Rudolf Höß , Franz Ziereis , Karl Otto Koch , Max Kögel , and Amon Göth . In the last days of World War II, a special group called the "Auxiliary-SS" ( SS-Mannschaft ) was formed as a last-ditch effort to keep concentration camps running and allow regular SS personnel to escape. Auxiliary-SS members were not considered regular SS personnel, but were conscripted members from other branches of
8066-400: The manor house and the grounds. The clearing in the forest camp, which contained large mass graves, was likewise fenced off. The camp consisted of separate zones: an administration section with nearby barracks and storage for plundered goods; and the more distant burial and cremation site to which victims were delivered in hermetically proofed superstructures . The SS-Sonderkommando "Lange"
8175-844: The murder of about 1,100 patients in Owińska , 2,750 patients at Kościan , 1,558 patients and 300 Poles at Działdowo , and hundreds of Poles at Fort VII where the mobile gas-chamber ( Einsatzwagen ) was invented. Their earlier hospital victims were usually shot out of town in the back of the neck. The two so-called Kaisers-Kaffe vans, manufactured by the Gaubschat factory in Berlin, were delivered in November. Chełmno began mass gassing operations on December 8, 1941 using vehicles approved by Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich from RSHA . Two months later, on January 20, 1942 , Heydrich, who had already confirmed
8284-497: The only two Jewish survivors of Chełmno, but he was in error. Some sources repeat that only Simon Srebnik and Mordechaï Podchlebnik survived the war but these are also in error. Podchlebnik is sometimes referred to as Michał (or Michael), in Polish and English versions of his name. Not all escapees have been identified in the postwar period. In 2002 Dr. Sara Roy of Harvard University wrote that her father, Abraham Roy, belonged to
8393-630: The paramilitary Brownshirts of the SA during the NSDAP purge known as the Night of the Long Knives (30 June to 2 July 1934), the SS took control of the fledgling camp system. The SS founded state-run concentration camps at Dachau , Oranienburg , and Esterwegen , which held the total of 107,000 'undesirables' already by 1935. On 26 June 1933, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler appointed SS- Oberführer Theodor Eicke
8502-436: The personnel shortage. Special death camps of Aktion Reinhard had also come into existence. Under the WVHA, the camps were separated into divisions of forced labor , concentration , and extermination camps , all linked by record-high profit margins propped up by the theft of cash and assets from the Holocaust victims. Gigantic camps at Auschwitz and Majdanek were built with the expectation of Soviet prisoners of war entering
8611-473: The prewar Communal Council before he left the ghetto, robbing them of their peace of mind with earth-shattering facts about the extermination process. Widawski saw the bodies of thirteen relatives murdered in gas vans including his own fiancée . Both fugitives, Justman and Widawski, arrived also at the Częstochowa Ghetto and met with Rabbi Chanoch Gad Justman . They headed in various directions and made
8720-492: The prisoners. Within the extermination camps, the Blockführer was in charge of the prisoner Sonderkommando and was also the person who would physically gas victims in the camp's gas chambers. The Jewish Sonderkommando workers in turn, were terrorised by up to around 100 mostly collaborator Trawniki men per camp, called Wachmannschaften (security guards or watchmen). The camp perimeter and watch towers were overseen by
8829-476: The purchase of Zyklon B for use at Auschwitz . Already in 1943 the SS-TV units began to receive orders to conceal as much of the evidence of the Holocaust as possible. Himmler was most concerned about covering up Nazi crimes ever since the Polish 22,000 victims of the Soviet Katyn massacre were discovered well preserved underground near Smolensk. The cremations began shortly thereafter and continued until
8938-405: The same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title SSTV . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=SSTV&oldid=1256144666 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description
9047-535: The so-called SS Special Detachment Lange was made up of Gestapo , Criminal Police , and Order Police personnel, under the leadership of Security Police and SD officers. Herbert Lange was replaced as camp commandant in March (or April) 1942 by Schultze. He was succeeded by SS-Captain Hans Bothmann , who formed and led the Special Detachment Bothmann . The maximum strength of each Special Detachment
9156-428: The stolen property for themselves, and some were charged for theft. Che%C5%82mno extermination camp Chełmno or Kulmhof was the first of Nazi Germany 's extermination camps and was situated 50 km (31 mi) north of Łódź , near the village of Chełmno nad Nerem . Following the invasion of Poland in 1939, Germany annexed the area into the new territory of Reichsgau Wartheland . The camp, which
9265-445: The transports at that time. The transports included most of the 5,000 Roma (Gypsies) who had been deported from Austria. Throughout 1942, the Jews from Wartheland were still being processed; in March 1943 the SS declared the district judenfrei . Other victims murdered at the killing center included several hundred Poles, and Soviet prisoners of war. During the summer of 1942, the new commandant Bothmann made substantial changes to
9374-458: The utmost of secrecy. The extermination camps' function was genocide; they included Treblinka , Bełżec , and Sobibór built specifically for Aktion Reinhard , as well as the original Chełmno extermination camp , and Majdanek which was fitted with mass killing facilities, along with Auschwitz. They were responsible for facilitating what the Nazis called the Final Solution , known since
9483-475: The very minimum, 152,000 people were murdered in the camp, which would make it the fifth deadliest extermination camp, after Auschwitz , Treblinka , Bełżec , and Sobibór . However, the West German prosecution, citing Nazi figures during the Chełmno trials of 1962–65, laid charges for at least 180,000 victims. The Polish official estimates, in the early postwar period, have suggested much higher numbers, up to
9592-516: The victims inside. Drivers were replaced. Bothmann's modifications included adding poison to gasoline. There is evidence that some red powder and a fluid were delivered from Germany by Maks Sado freight company, in order to murder the victims more quickly. Another major change involved parking the gas vans while prisoners were murdered. They were no longer driven en route to the forest cremation area with living victims inside. After having annihilated almost all Jews of Wartheland District, in March 1943
9701-491: The victims of secret executions." From the SS-TV inception, Eicke fostered an attitude of "inflexible harshness" exercised by the masters. This core belief continued to influence SS guards in all concentration camps even after Eicke had taken over command of the SS Totenkopf Division. Recruits were taught to hate their enemies through tough training regimes and Nazi indoctrination . Within camps, guards subjugated
9810-573: The war as the Holocaust ; perpetrated by the SS within the command structure of the Reich Security Main Office , subordinate to Heinrich Himmler , and the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office or WVHA. At the outbreak of World War II in Europe, the SS Division Totenkopf was formed from SS-TV personnel. It soon developed a reputation for brutality, participating in war crimes such as
9919-526: The war, some Chełmno extermination camp personnel were tried in Poland as well as in other court cases spanning a period of about 20 years. The first judicial trial of three former members of the SS-Sonderkommando Kulmhof , including camp's deputy commandant Oberscharführer Walter Piller, took place in 1945 at the District Court in Łódź . The examination of evidence during the investigation
10028-625: The war. Chełmno (Kulmhof) camp was set up by SS-Sturmbannführer Herbert Lange , following his gas van experiments in the murder of 1,558 Polish prisoners of the Soldau concentration camp northeast of Chełmno nad Nerem . In October 1941, Lange toured the area looking for a suitable site for an extermination centre, and chose Chełmno on the Ner , because of the estate, with a large manor house similar to Sonnenstein , which could be used for mass admissions of prisoners with only minor modifications. Staff for
10137-435: The women allowed to keep slips on, the victims were taken to the cellar and across the ramp into the back of a gas van holding from 50–70 people each ( Opel Blitz ) and up to 150 ( Magirus ). When the van was full, the doors were shut and the engine started. Surviving witnesses heard their screams as they were dying of asphyxiation . After about 5–10 minutes, the vans full of corpses were driven 4 km (2.5 mi) to
10246-413: The work was done. The gas vans were sent back to Berlin. The remaining Jewish workers were executed just before the German retreat from the Chełmno killing center on January 18, 1945, as the Soviet army approached (it reached the camp two days later). The 15-year-old Jewish prisoner Simon Srebnik was the only one to survive the last executions with a gunshot wound to the head. Historians estimate that
10355-572: The Łódź Ghetto lasting for two weeks. German officials with the aid of Ordnungspolizei rounded up 10,000 Polish Jews based on selection by the ghetto Judenrat . The victims were transported from the Radegast train station in Łódź, to Koło railway station, 10 km (6.2 mi) northwest of Chełmno. There, the SS and police personnel supervised transfer of prisoners from the freight as well as passenger trains, to smaller-size cargo trains running on narrow gauge tracks, which took them from Koło to
10464-457: The Łódź Ghetto. Greiser and the SS decided to create space for the incoming Jews by annihilating the existing Polish-Jewish population in his district. According to post-war testimony of Wilhelm Koppe , Higher SS and Police Leader for Reichsgau Wartheland , Koppe received an order from Himmler to liaise with Greiser regarding the Sonderbehandlung requested by the latter. Koppe entrusted
10573-523: Was a place of early experimentation in the development of the Nazi extermination programme. Red Army troops captured the town of Chełmno on January 17, 1945 . By then, the Germans had already destroyed evidence of the camp's existence, leaving no prisoners behind. One of the camp survivors, who was fifteen years old at the time, testified that only three Jewish males had escaped successfully. The Holocaust Encyclopedia counted seven Jews who escaped; among them
10682-501: Was an independent unit within the SS, with its own command structure. It ran the camps throughout Germany and later in occupied Europe . Camps in Germany included Dachau , Bergen-Belsen , and Buchenwald ; camps elsewhere in Europe included Auschwitz - Birkenau in German occupied Poland and Mauthausen in Austria among the numerous other concentration camps, and death camps handled with
10791-458: Was arrested for trying to bring public attention to what was being perpetrated at the camp. He was interrogated and executed three days later on February 28, 1942, near a church along with his wife. His secret communiqué was intercepted by the SS-Sonderkommando . Today, there is an obelisk to his memory erected at Chełmno on August 7, 1991 . Over 4,500, Czech Jews from Prague were sent to
10900-593: Was both the successor and expanded organisation to the SS-Wachverbände (guard units) formed in 1933. While the Totenkopf was the universal cap badge of the SS, the SS-TV also wore this insignia on the right collar tab to distinguish itself from other SS formations. On 29 March 1936, concentration camp guards and administration units were officially designated as the SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV). The SS-TV
11009-619: Was carried out by Judge Władysław Bednarz. The subsequent four trials, held in Bonn , began in 1962 and concluded three years later in 1965 in Cologne . Adolf Eichmann testified about the camp during his 1961 war-crimes trial in Jerusalem. He visited it once in late 1942. Simon Srebnik , from the burial Sonderkommando , testified in both the Chelmno Guard and Eichmann trials. Nicknamed Spinnefix at
11118-544: Was just under 100 men, of whom around 80 belonged to the Order Police. The local SS also maintained a "paper command" of the camps Allgemeine-SS inspectorate, to which most of the Chełmno camp staff were attached for administrative purposes. Historians do not believe members of the 120th SS-Standarte office established in Chełmno performed any duties at the camp. The SS and police began murdering victims at Chełmno on December 8, 1941 . The first people transported to
11227-849: Was named commander of the SS-Totenkopfverbände and the number of men under his command increased from 2,876 to 3,222; the Concentration Camps Inspectorate (CCI) was also provided official funding through the Reich's budget office, and Eicke was allowed to recruit future troops from the Hitler Youth based on regional needs. In 1937, the Wachsturmbanne were in turn organized into three main SS-Totenkopfstandarten (regiments). By 1936, Eicke had begun to establish military formations of concentration camp personnel which eventually became
11336-536: Was promoted to SS- Brigadeführer (equivalent to a major-general in the army) on 30 January 1934. Following the Night of the Long Knives, Eicke – who played a role in the affair by shooting SA chief Ernst Röhm – was again promoted to the rank of SS- Gruppenführer and officially appointed Inspector of Concentration Camps and Commander of the SS-Wachverbände . Thereafter, all remaining SA-run camps were taken over by
11445-439: Was set into the floor. The floor of the van had an opening which could be connected to the exhaust by means of a removable metal pipe. When the lorries were full of people, the double doors at the back were closed and the exhaust connected to the interior of the van. — SS-Scharführer Walter Burmeister, The Good Old Days In late February 1942, the secretary of the local Polish council in Chełmno, Stanisław Kaszyński (b. 1903),
11554-521: Was set up under Oswald Pohl . Then in 1942, the CCI became Amt D (Office D) of the consolidated main office known as the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt (SS Economic and Administrative Department; WVHA) under Pohl. Glücks continued to manage the camp administration until the end of the war. Therefore, the entire concentration camp system was placed under the authority of the WVHA with
11663-416: Was specifically intended for no other purpose than mass murder, operated from December 8, 1941 , to April 11, 1943 , parallel to Operation Reinhard during the deadliest phase of the Holocaust , and again from June 23, 1944 , to January 18, 1945 , during the Soviet counter-offensive. In 1943, modifications were made to the camp's killing methods as the reception building had already been dismantled. At
11772-558: Was supplied with two vans initially, each carrying about 50 Jews gassed en route to the forest. Later on, Lange was given three gas vans by the RSHA in Berlin for the murder of greater numbers of victims. The vehicles had been converted to mobile gas-chambers by the Gaubschat company ( de ) in Berlin which, by June 1942, produced twenty of them in accordance with the SS purchase order. The sealed compartments (also called superstructures) installed on
11881-670: Was the author of the Grojanowski Report , written under an assumed name by Szlama Ber Winer , a prisoner in the Jewish Sonderkommando who escaped only to perish at Bełżec during the liquidation of yet another Jewish ghetto in German-occupied Poland . In June 1945, two survivors testified at the trial of camp personnel in Łódź . The three best-known survivors testified about Chełmno at the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem . Two survivors testified also at
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