Chelmno Extermination camp

To say that Chelmno is a forgotten extermination camp would be an overstatement,however there are many people who have never heard of this camp.

Many think there were only a few concentration camps but in fact there were hundreds.

Chelmno was the first Nazi camp where gassing was used to murder Jews on a large scale. The site was chosen due to the village’s position in the Warthegau region (previously an area of Western Poland, but now part of Nazi Germany). It was 47 kilometres to the west of the Lodz ghetto where many of the victims came from.

A total of 320,000 people were murdered at Chelmno. These included Jews from the Lodz ghetto and throughout the area, in addition to 5,000 Roma who had been previously sent to the ghetto.

Chelmno consisted of two sites, just two and a half miles apart. The first was located in a…