Chełmno

Chełmno — Kulmhof — was the first killing center of the Shoah, and the only one to have used nothing but gas vans. There was no selection and no labor camp: the convoys came from the Warthegau and above all from the Łódź ghetto; arrivals were received in a manor house, invited to undress for a bath, then led through a corridor to a van whose engine was running; the bodies were buried, then burned, in a clearing in the Rzuchów forest.

Chełmno holds a singular place because a few escapees got out very early: Jakub Grojanowski reached the Warsaw ghetto, where his account was recorded by Emanuel Ringelblum's team and transmitted to London as early as the following year. It is one of the first documents through which the world came to know. In total, there were only a handful of survivors.