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This book is a comprehensive account of the Chelmno death camp. Chelmno was not only the first Nazi death camp, it also set a horrific example in establishing gas vans as the first mass use of poison gas to kill Jews. Chris Webb and Artur Hojan cover the construction and the development of the mass murder process, as perfected by the Nazis. The story is painstakingly told from all sides, the Jewish inmates, some who survived the Holocaust, the perpetrators, the Polish Arbeitskommando, and others.
A major part of this work is the Jewish Roll of Remembrance that includes the few survivors and the Jews deported from the Reich, via the Litzmannstadt ghetto, to their deaths in the gas vans. The book is richly illustrated with historical and contemporary photographs and documents.
About the author
Chris Webb has been studying the Holocaust for over forty-five years. He has published five books on Hitler's extermination camps. He has also given lectures and presentations at several universities on Aktion Reinhardt and other aspects of the Holocaust. He has founded and co-founded a number of Holocaust websites and has acted as an advisor to the Imperial War Museum and the BBC. He is also a member of the Tiergartenstrasse4 Association and a member of CARR.
Artur Hojan (1973-2013) was a Polish historian and author, also a well-regarded expert on Hitler's T4 Euthanasia program and Herbert Lange, the first commandant of Chelmno. A founder of the Tiergartenstrasse4 Association. He lost his life in 2013; his original research has been used in this book. The book is dedicated to his memory.
Report
"Chelmno is still relatively unknown, even amongst esteemed historians of the Holocaust. The importance of Chelmno in the development of the Holocaust is also not well understood and is certainly under-researched. This book is therefore timely. As always, Chris Webb brings his own style to the problem of how to write about the Nazi death camps while respecting the memory of the victims."-Cameron Munro, Tiergarten4 Association e.V. "A crucial extension to our body of knowledge on the Holocaust, The Chelmno Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance is an authoritative and well-researched account of the construction, historical context, and liquidation of Hitler's first death camp. Drawing on detailed accounts from Jewish prisoners, perpetrator biographies and war crime trials, Chris Webb and the late Artur Hojan paint a characteristically rich picture of the atrocities that happened at Chelmno, as well as providing an impactful list of remembrance. Going forward, this book is a great resource for modern historians and students of the Holocaust who wish to understand more about how Chelmno sparked wider developments in the systematic murder of six million Jews from 1941 to 1945."-Dr William Allchorn, Associate Director of the Centre for the Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR) and Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Leeds
