An old
palatial estate at Chełmno, Poland (Kulmhof in German),
about seventy kilometers west of
Łódź,
became the first Nazi camp dedicated exclusively to mass
killings by gas. The first commandant of Chełmno was Herbert
Lange, who previously had administered the Nazis' euthanasia
program. The first transport of Jews arrived at Chełmno
on
December 7, 1941; there they were suffocated to death by
exhaust fumes of sealed vans. A frequent visitor to Chełmno
was Hans Biebow, Nazi ruler of the Litzmannstadt (Łódź)
Jewish ghetto. By war's end, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000
people, mostly Jews from Łódź and the surrounding
Warthegau district, had been put to death at Chełmno. No
mail was allowed. Operations continued until January 17,
1945, when the Red Army approached.
Below: On a
March 27, 1942, postal card from Kammwald, Bohemia-Moravia
Protectorate, Karl Eisler inquired of the Nazi ghetto rulers
at Litzmannstadt concerning a 50-reichsmark payment he had
sent to his brother, Franz Eisler, a ghetto inmate, which
had not been acknowledge. At that time, ghetto residents
were forbidden to send mail to outsiders, to prevent news
about the deportations and panic in the ghetto from reaching
the outside world. From mid-January to mid-May of 1942,
sixty-six transports carried 54,990 Jews from the
Litzmannstadt ghetto to the Chełmno extermination camp,
where they were gassed to death. The card has a March 30
boxed receiving handstamp of Biebow's ghetto administration
at the left. next
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