Chelmno Kills Case Study

This system of killing centres in some ways converges with the creation of the killing centres in the East, namely Chelmno-Kulmhof, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. Much like Brandenburg, Chelmno was used as a sort of “testing ground” for mass murder in the East and only functioned as a killing centre for a few months. Furthermore, it is worth noting that Sereny reveals that Chelmno was originally planned to be used as a euthanasia institute and more than likely was originally staffed with doctors and nurses from the T4 staff, however, once it became an extermination centre for Jews, it possibly became a killing centre solely for Jews. Arguably in the case of Chelmno, the convergence and divergence between the two programs is apparent. The …show more content…
The disabled patients were unloaded from the buses and led into administration rooms where they were ordered to strip before getting a quick examination by physicians as well as being told they had to bathe and were provided with a towel, a bar of soap and sometimes a toothbrush. Once they entered the chamber, the heavy iron door was locked and sealed behind them and the gas pumped into the “shower room”, where within five minutes the victims were unconscious and after ten minutes they were dead. The gas chambers had the façade of a “shower room”, complete with ceramic tiled walls and floors, lined with benches along the walls, and completed with pipes that most often had shower heads and specialized holes in which the gas was fed pumped into the room from another chamber room. These “shower rooms” were created with the intention of lulling victims into a false sense of normalcy. That they would shower and collect their clothing and belongings once they were done. This method or “killing software” was even applied to young children, Elvira Manthey in an interview recalls her experience of narrowly missing death, she was ordered by a nurse to undress and enter the room for a shower, "I didn't realise what had happened until after the war, when we found out about the Jews and euthanasia. Then I realised that the children had been gassed…and that I had been allowed to turn back in front of the gas chamber…I very narrowly escaped death…". Elvira Manthey was labelled “feeble minded” because her father was a vagrant and was therefore sent to an institution in which she was later transferred to Hadamar to

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