Laboratorium zagłady – nowa ekspozycja historyczna na terenie obozu zagłady Kulmhof w Chełmnie nad Nerem
Holocaust Laboratory – New Historical Exhibition at the Former Kulmhof Death Center in Chełmno nad Nerem

Summary/Abstract: Kulmhof in Chełmno nad Nerem was the first Nazi death center in occupied Europe and one that operated the longest. It became the site of the extermination of Jews from the territories incorporated into the Reich, including the Łódź ghetto and other countries in Europe. That place had been forgotten for a long time. It was only in December 2019 that a new permanent historical exhibition was opened at the former death center in Chełmno nad Nerem. The terrain was cleaned up and marked. Excavations conducted over the last several decades in both Chełmno nad Nerem and the nearby Rzuchów Forest have facilitated a more precise recreation of the topography of the crime and have unearthed a number of precious personal effects of the murdered. Despite or perhaps owing to this modest form of commemoration this place’s unique character has been highlighted. It was neither a concentration camp like those in Dachau or Buchenwald, where the architecture constituted a bold expression of the Nazi ideology, nor a ‘factory of death’ – a site of industrialized mass murder like Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was a grange in the countryside hastily transformed into a mass extermination center.

• Details
• Contents