![]() ![]() Lanzmann asks Michelsohn to describe the manor house (Schloss) where the Jews were told to undress and give up their valuables before being loaded into the gas vans. Her husband also complained because Bothmann held "orgies" with German girls from Wartheland. Lanzmann says that he thinks that the Germans used gas vans to kill Jews from the beginning and Michelsohn says that it has been so long that she could be remembering things incorrectly. Lanzmann mentions the smell again and Michelsohn says that the smell was only in the first period. She says she was able to carry on with life during such a terrible time because she had no choice: her husband had to do his duty for the government. She says it was depressing because "they are people like we are." She says that the villagers could not do anything about what was happening to the Jews. Michelsohn says that her husband complained to Bothmann about the fact that the villagers had to witness the terrible treatment of the Jews. He tells her that only two Jews survived Chelmno [Simon Srebnik and Michael Podchlebnik). She does not recognize Lanzmann's description of Srebnik. ![]() She recognizes the names of a couple of them. Lanzmann asks what Bothmann was like and Michelsohn says that he was drunk most of the time because it was the only way he could handle the work.Ġ1:20:17 CR 3 Lanzmann asks Michelsohn about certain Germans who worked at the camp (Laabs, Hafele, Burmeister). Lanzmann says that in the second period the Jews were gathered in the church and Jewish clothing was distributed among the Poles in Łódź. She felt there would be retaliation for the exterminations. Everyone knew the Jews were being exterminated and Michelsohn says that the Poles were glad about it. She says the gas vans came into use later, when there were too many Jews to kill and burn at Majdanek. She describes the trucks that were used to gas Jews. She never witnessed the murder of the Jews, but she assumed their bodies were burned because of the smell. The condition of the Jews was terrible and sad and their cries were awful to hear. Transports arrived almost daily and Michelsohn says that some multiple of 40, 40,000 or 400,000, were killed at Chelmno. Lanzmann asks if she knew the Jews were being killed and she says she never saw it, but there was a terrible burning smell that hung over the village in the evenings. The Jews were brought to the church where they were told that they would be deloused. She saw some of the transports of Jews arrive in trucks and later on a narrow gauge railway that had been built for the purpose. Lanzmann asks if she remembers the arrival of Commandant Bothmann and his Sonderkommando (Bothmann oversaw the extermination of hundreds of thousands of Jews between spring 1942 and March 1943, when deportation of Jews to Chelmno was halted). They came to Chelmno in December 1939 but were forced to move from their house when the camp was established. They discuss some of the buildings in the town, the castle (Schloss) and the church, a German municipal building, and the school where the Michelsohns lived. Her husband was an ethnic German from Riga. She talks about the small school and says there was only one store. Lanzmann asks what daily life was like for her family. The local Poles worked as farmhands and some worked in the local forest. ![]() There were ten or eleven German families with lots of children. She says that conditions were very primitive: no running water, no electricity. Lanzmann asks Michelson for help understanding what things were like in Chelmno. She says that she told people in Germany about the extermination in 1942 or 1943 but they accused her of spreading atrocity propaganda.įILM ID 3352 - Camera Rolls #1-3 - 01:00:00 to 01:32:09 She talks about the Sonderkommando, Jews killed in a church, the terrible smell that pervaded the town when bodies were burned, the Poles' attitude toward the Jews, and the operation of gas vans. Martha Michelson was the wife of a Nazi schoolteacher in Chelmno. ![]()
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