Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - The Polish Working Detail

Mass Killing Unit of Warthegau

Sonderkommando Lange in German Documents:

 Euthanasia 1940/41

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents:

Part I: Origin and Foundation

Part II: The Extermination of 100,000 Jews

Part III: Body Disposal (Appendix)

Part IV: Pabianice Sorting Camp

Part V: Funding

Part VI: The Polish Working Detail

Part VII: Motor Pool and Fuel (Appendix)

Part VIII: Drinks and Tobacco (With Excursus on the Extermination of the Sinti and Roma)

Part IX: Farewell (1943)

The Polish working detail of Sonderkommando Kulmhof was situated in the grey zone between prisoners and collaborators. Once imprisoned in Fort VII in Posen, the Poles were forced to empty the gas van and bury the corpses during the Euthanasia killings of Sonderkommando Lange in 1940/1941. At the beginning in December 1941, the same job awaited for them in Kulmhof extermination camp, until a permanent Jewish working detail was established for the forest camp at latest in early January 1942 (see section Mass Graves here). During the erection of the camp, the Polish prisoners constructed the wooden ramp and fence used for loading the gas vans. ^[1] They were regarded as sufficiently trustworthy and reliable by the Sonderkommando leadership for more critical and responsible work, like collecting the Jewelry and money of the Jews in the Kulmhof palace ^[2] (also ref 3 here), searching the orifices of the corpses for valuables (ref 5 here), accompanying the SS and police men outside the camp, ^[3] supervising the undressing of the Jewish victims and forcing them into the gas vans, ^[4] overseeing the Jewish working details, ^[5] driving the vehicles including the gas vans, ^[6] possibly establishing the connection between the exhaust and the gassing box (the claim should be taken carefully as it was made by perpetrators to exculpate themselves), ^[7] maintenance services on the Sonderkommando motor pool. ^[8]

In return for their loyal service, the members of the Polish working detail were awarded a large degree of freedom and preferential treatment. They were accommodated on the upper floor of the Kulmhof palace, but could move around freely in the camp and in the village ^[9] , as illustrated by a series of photographs showing them strolling and posing in Kulmhof village as well as drinking beer with members of the Police Sonderkommando at the Kulmhof palace (for example Figure 1 and 2). ^[10] They could meet Polish women and were in some cases allowed to pick Jewish girls from the transports for the night. ^[11] After the war, one of its members Henryk Mania claimed that "I did not run away, because I was afraid that my family will be killed as they threatened in the beginning" - a motive corroborated by the local residents Jozef Grabowski and Jan Krysinski, but contradicted by another Polish worker, Henryk Maliczak. ^[12]

Figure 1: Members of the Polish working detail on the bridge across the river Ner with the Kulmhof village in the background (1942/early 1943). From left to right: Henryk Mania, Stanislaw Polubinski, Lech Jaskolski, Kajetan Skrzypczynski, Henryk Maliczak; photograph from Montague, Chelmno and the Holocaust, image 28, online available here (see also examination of Henryk Mania of  14 April 1964, Pawlicka-Nowak, Swiadectwa Zaglady, p. 123 ff.).

Figure 2: Members of the Polish working detail and Police Sonderkommando drinking beer in front of the Kulmhof palace (1942/early 1943). Photograph from Montague, Chelmno and the Holocaust, image 27, online available here, see also close-up here.

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - Funding

Mass Killing Unit of Warthegau

Sonderkommando Lange in German Documents:

 Euthanasia 1940/41

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents:

Part I: Origin and Foundation

Part II: The Extermination of 100,000 Jews

Part III: Body Disposal (Appendix)

Part IV: Pabianice Sorting Camp

Part V: Funding

Part VI: The Polish Working Detail

Part VII: Motor Pool and Fuel (Appendix)

Part VIII: Drinks and Tobacco (With Excursus on the Extermination of the Sinti and Roma)

Part IX: Farewell (1943)

On 9 January 1942, when the killing of the Sinti and Roma of the Ghetto Litzmannstadt was completed, ^[1] the commandant Herbert Lange received a bar cheque for 20,000 RM from the Ghetto Administration "as special assignment for the gipsies' camp" (Document 105). The payment may have been a danger bonus for the Sonderkommando men because of typhus cases among the Sinti and Roma.

Apart from that, the extermination camp was apparently funded by the Provincial Government in Posen in this initial period of December - February 1942. The cash confiscated in Kulmhof was delivered to Posen, as shown by the transfer of a "surplus of Sonderkommando Kulmhof" of about 176,000 RM in late April 1942 from the Reich Governor's office to the Litzmannstadt Ghetto Administration, which had been "accumulated at Sonderkommando Lange and [was] partly retained here" (Document 109). The transactions of the Sonderkommando were carried out with the postal cheque account 14551 of the "Landesversicherungsanstalt Wartheland" (State Insurance Institution) (Document 159). ^[2] Such cover up account - possibly related to the Health Insurance Department of Landesversicherungsanstalt Wartheland - might have been a relict of camouflaging the Euthanasia operations of Sonderkommando Lange.

Contemporary Handwritten Letter of Auschwitz Sonderkommando Prisoner Marcel Nadjari Deciphered

According to a recent article Das Ungelesene lesen by the Russian historian Pavel Polian, 90% of the contemporary handwritten letter of the Sonderkommando prisoner Marcel Nadjari has been deciphered "through the use of multispectral images". Previously, the amount of readable text was limited to about 10%.

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - Pabianice Sorting Camp

Mass Killing Unit of Warthegau

Sonderkommando Lange in German Documents:

 Euthanasia 1940/41

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents:

Part I: Origin and Foundation

Part II: The Extermination of 100,000 Jews

Part III: Body Disposal (Appendix)

Part IV: Pabianice Sorting Camp

Part V: Funding

Part VI: The Polish Working Detail

Part VII: Motor Pool and Fuel (Appendix)

Part VIII: Drinks and Tobacco (With Excursus on the Extermination of the Sinti and Roma)

Part IX: Farewell (1943)

The first commandant Herbert Lange could resort in Kulmhof to his experience in organizing the killing and burial of people. In the first months of the extermination, he did, however, not anticipate the necessary efforts for properly storing and processing the luggage from the large scale mass killing. The effects were piled up behind the palace, thrown into in the nearby church and granary building.

Debunking the Partisan Meme: 2. Contents of Shooting Reports

Further to Part 1, denier claims about Jews being shot on partisan grounds often ignore the elephant in the room, namely the overwhelming emphasis on the 'Jewish question' in the reports sent by the killers. The actions against Jews also fail to fulfill the criteria of partisan war, where one would expect the capture of enemy weapons and the killing of people on both sides in actual combat. Instead, the killers used euphemistic language such as "active or passive resistance", which enabled them to interpret any real or imagined gesture by a Jew as a hostile act. It often requires a deliberate and stubborn gullibility on the part of a denier to read the pretexts given in the Einsatzgruppen reports as genuine and valid reasons to execute someone.

Debunking the Partisan Meme: 1. The Killers' Racial Mission

When deniers lamely seek to excuse German shooting policies in the USSR, one of their most common tactics is find references to partisans in the shooting reports and to take at face value the claim that Jews were shot because of their support for these partisans. For example, in 2013, Mattogno acknowledged Kube's report of July 1942 that 55,000 Jews had been shot in White Ruthenia in the last 10 weeks but claimed that the shootings were "motivated by the anti-partisan war and not by an extermination order of Jews for being Jews."[1]. This blog article debunks that claim in two parts. The first demonstrates that the Nazi leadership, Wehrmacht commanders and individual shooters often understood their mission to be a racial one: a war of extermination against Jews as a race. The second shows how the content of shooting reports betrays a racial motive and is inconsistent in its treatment of Jews as partisans.

A Hero Died

This article is not about any of the topics that HC bloggers usually write about. It's about something that I see as more important, also considering  current political rhetoric (hopefully it's just that).

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - Body Disposal

Mass Killing Unit of Warthegau

Sonderkommando Lange in German Documents:

 Euthanasia 1940/41

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents:

Part I: Origin and Foundation

Part II: The Extermination of 100,000 Jews

Part III: Body Disposal (Appendix)

Part IV: Pabianice Sorting Camp

Part V: Funding

Part VI: The Polish Working Detail

Part VII: Motor Pool and Fuel (Appendix)

Part VIII: Drinks and Tobacco (With Excursus on the Extermination of the Sinti and Roma)

Part IX: Farewell (1943)

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - Body Disposal (Appendix)

Mass Killing Unit of Warthegau

Sonderkommando Lange in German Documents:

 Euthanasia 1940/41

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents:

Part I: Origin and Foundation

Part II: The Extermination of 100,000 Jews

Part III: Body Disposal (Appendix)

Part IV: Pabianice Sorting Camp

Part V: Funding

Part VI: The Polish Working Detail

Part VII: Motor Pool and Fuel (Appendix)

Part VIII: Drinks and Tobacco (With Excursus on the Extermination of the Sinti and Roma)

Part IX: Farewell (1943)

Appendix to Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - Body Disposal

Short debunking of Steven Anderson's video "The Holocaust Hoax Exposed".

This video by a nutty religious fanatic is popular enough to merit some attention, so here it goes.

Needless to say, the man is a total hack who is ignorant about the very trivial basics of the Holocaust. Like, its definition.

1:32: "The issue is: whether or not 6 million Jews died in gas chambers and were subsequently cremated".
3:27: "The question is: were 6 million Jews gassed and then cremated?"

Since nobody serious has ever claimed that 6 million Jews died in gas chambers, Anderson shows that he has not even bothered to look up what the Holocaust is supposed to be before barging in to "debunk" it!

It's like trying to "debunk" quantum physics while thinking that Newton's laws are paragraphs of the British penal code.

There, I could end this review right now. No one who's uttered something this stupid deserves to be taken seriously.

But just for the fun of it let's see what else he has to say.