Testament from the Chelmno Death Camp in Yad Vashem Studies, Volume XXI

The Testament of the Last Prisoners of the Chelmno Death Camp

This study presents a translation of a document recently found in the archives of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in Moscow, which was rendered into Russian from Polish. Originally written in a notebook and given to a Polish peasant who passed it on the Red Army, it contains the final testaments of the last group of Jewish forced labor workers in Chelmno, mainly from Lodz, who were executed on the night of 17–18 January 1945. Two of the men miraculously survived the shooting. The writers of the document give their names, addresses, names of family members, tell what happened to them during the war, and call for revenge.