As the first extermination camp established by the Nazi regime and the prototype of the single-purpose death camps of Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec, the Chelmno death camp stands as a crucial but largely unexplored element of the Holocaust. This book is the first comprehensive work in any language to detail all aspects of the camp's history, organisation and operations and to remedy the dearth of information in the Holocaust literature about Chelmno, which served as a template for the Nazis' 'Final Solution'. The book reveals the mobile killing squad that employed the world's first gas van to terminate the lives of mentally-ill patients and the assembly-line procedure employed in the camp - from a deceptive welcoming speech to the gassing of victims in special vans. Based on over 20 years of thorough research, this work contains first-hand accounts and photographs never before published and is a vital contribution to a painfully neglected but critically important chapter in the history of the Holocaust.

Patrick Montague received a Fulbright Scholarship to fund his research on the history of Chelmno - this book arises from his research.