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APPENDIX II: The Kaszyński Affair ThearrestanddeathofStanislawKaszyńskiisakeyeventintheChelmno death camp’s early history. The story is one of heroism, courage, personal responsibility, friendship and betrayal. Stanislaw Kaszyński was born on November 16, 1903, in Brudzew. After graduating from high school he eventually began working as secretary in Chelmno’s local government in 1928. The next year he married Karolina Poslowska and the couple had four children, two boys and two girls. Kaszyński was active in the local community, serving as the head of the volunteer fire brigade and founding an amateur theater group. By all accounts, he was well-liked and respected by those who knew him. Just after the Chelmno death camp became operational on December 7, 1941, the former secretary of the Chelmno gmina, Stanislaw Kaszyński, wrote a letter to the Swiss consulate in Lódź, containing information about the establishment of an extermination center in his village. It is not known how, but the camp commandant, Herbert Lange, found out about this letter and arrested Kaszyński at the gmina office on January 31, 1942. He was held in the mansion for several days. On February 3, as he was being led to Lange’s office, he turned and started to run down the gully between the church and the mansion. One of the guards accompanying Kaszyński raised his rifle, shot three times and killed him.1 A couple of local villagers were ordered to carry the corpse back to the mansion. The body was probably taken to the forest and buried. Kaszyński’s wife, Karolina, was later arrested and taken to Lódź. She wrote letters to her four children from two different prisons in Lódź and then was never heard from again.2 With the death of their parents, the four young children were taken in and raised by relatives and family friends. Jan Oliskiewicz worked in the Landratsamt (county administration office) in Kolo and knew Kaszyński through official contacts. He became embroiled in the affair because Kaszyński had passed the letter to him. Oliskiewicz later recalled the affair. On December 13, 1941—but I’m not sure of the date—Kaszyński came to me with a request to translate a letter into German. This letter was to be sent to the Swiss consulate in Lódź. It contained information about the liquidation, 214 CHELMNO AND THE HOLOCAUST by gas, of the Jews in the camp at Chelmno, as well as the murder, in the same way, of the Gypsies. The letter also touched upon a whole series of questions not connected with the camp at Chelmno. On February 5, 1942, members of the Sonderkommando took me to Chelmno where I was interrogated in the matter of Kaszyński’s letter. The day before I was arrested, I found out that Kaszyński had been shot. I stubbornly maintained that I burned the translation of the letter; that it had not been sent. I was badly beaten and put into a cell in the basement of the mansion. In the neighboring cells were Jews, women and men, whose voices I heard because the guards forced them to sing constantly. This singing continued for a couple of days. One morning, before dawn, I heard the sound of clanging chains; a clanging as if something was being taken from the basement. A couple of times a Jew was brought to my cell, wearing only a shirt despite the frost. This Jew took the [excrement] bucket from the cell. I heard voices outside in a mumbled language, not exactly Polish and not exactly German. In fragments of conversations among the guards, I heard about some bodies laying durcheinander [strewn in a mess] in the trucks. During the day, I heard shots, in series of four or five. I had been arrested on February 5, 1942; I heard the shots on February 8 and 9, 1942. In the morning I heard a vehicle driving up to the mansion. Afterward I heard the sound of a lot of bare feet running above me. After shouts of “genug, genug” [enough, enough] the footsteps stopped. I heard the sound of slamming doors; then for some five minutes, the sound of a motor. Then it drove off. I had the impression that as one vehicle left, another one arrived.3 After spending some 16 days in the basement of the mansion, Oliskiewicz was freed on condition that he “forget...

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