Everyone knows about Auschwitz; no one's heard of Chelmno, which was in many ways a much more horrible place. It's true that more than a million people died at Auschwitz and "only" 150,000 people died at Chelmno (or possibly as many as twice that number, estimates vary widely). But tens of thousands of people SURVIVED Auschwitz. The number of Chelmno survivors? Six.

This is one of only two English language book-length studies of the camp that I know of, so it would be valuable no matter what. But it's also an excellent work of history, including many facts I have never seen anywhere else. Montague got to know Szymon Srebrnik, Chelmno's last known survivor (he died in 2006), and interviewed him several times for the book. I kind of wish he'd talked bout Srebrnik's postwar life -- namely, how he managed to find a way to live after going through that kind of horror -- but I realize that was beyond the scope of this book.

The reader should know that it isn't until well into the book that Montague starts talking about Jews. That's because Chelmno (the Nazis' first attempt at an extermination camp) was originally created to serve the T4 program, the Third Reich's program to eliminate disabled and mentally ill people. It wasn't until after the war started that they got the idea to start using it for Jews also.

As Montague points out, the T4 program was an important factor in both the history of Chelmno and the Holocaust in general, because it got the SS men accustomed to the idea of gassing vast numbers of people. So of course he talks about it in detail. I suppose if you really wanted you could skip the T4 section and head straight on to 1939, but you really shouldn't.

Anyway, this was an absorbing book and it's got info you won't find anywhere else. Highly recommend for researchers. ( )