The Last Family Outing (48" x 30")
Artist's Comment
Kulmhof (Chelmno) located in Poland, the first Nazi extermination camp. After the victims arrival at Chelmno they were taken in groups of fifty - men, women and children to the ground floor of the "Schloss" a large building. There they were told to strip and put their valuables in a basket. The victims were then taken to the cellar past signs reading "To the Wasch room". From there they were brought to an enclosed ramp. At the end of the ramp stood a gas van with its doors open. The moment the victims entered the ramp, the Nazis forced them with blows to run into the van.
Method of killing. The gas vans (apparently three were used in this region) were hermetically sealed. Carbon monoxide from Renault trucks was pumped into the van via a hole in the floor. The inside dimensions of the van 13 to 15 feet long - 6.75 feet wide - 6.5 feet high. Fifty to seventy people were crammed into each van.
Chelmno was operative from November 1941 to January 1945. A total of 320.000 were killed there. Also killed at Chelmno a few hundred Poles, Soviet prisoners and eighty-eight Czechoslovak children from the Czech village of Lidice.
Total survivors out of 320.000: Three men. Also one boy shot in the head and left for dead by the departing Nazis in 1945, was found and nursed by Polish peasants. He survived and eventually made it to Israel.
Docent Guide
Kulmhof or Chelmno (Polish) was one of the six death camps located within the former borders of Poland annexed into Germany as the Warthaland. It was the first extermination camp that experimented with mobile gas chambers. These were large vans produced by Dodge, Mercedes and Saurer modified so that the exhaust fumes came into the cargo area and asphyxiated the victims.
Two types of gas vans had been built: a larger one, 5.8 meters in length, and a smaller one, measuring 4.5 meters. Both were about 2.5 meters wide and 1.7 meters high. The bigger one could accommodate between 130 and 150 people, when densely packed inside, and the smaller one from 80 to 100.
The gas vans were supplied to the Einsatzgruppen and to the Chelmno death camps in November-December 1941. The killing in Chelmno began on December 8, 1941. By the middle of 1942, about thirty gas vans had been produced by a private car manufacturer, the Gabschat Farengewerke GMBH, Will=Walter Strasse 32-38, Berlin. When the van returned to the camp after a drive in the countryside, the dead or half-dead bodies were thrown into furnaces. Chelmo became operative in November, 1941 and continued to operate until January, 1945. Approximately 320,000 victims were killed there. There were only three survivors from this camp. Gas vans were used in the murder of approximately 700,000 people throughout Nazi-dominated Europe.
- Walter Rauff On Use of Gas Vans
In September 1941, SS-Obersturmbannführer Walter Rauff, head of Department II D of the Reich Security Main Office, sent for Friedrich Pradel, head of transportation service, and told him of his idea to remodel heavy trucks in such a way that they could be used to kill a greater nember of people in the Soviet territories. Rauff later declared to an official of the German embassy in Santiago, Chile:
"So far as the extermination of Jews in Russia is concerned, I know that gas vans were used...I don't believe that Pradel took the initiative in the development of the gas vans. He must have been under orders, either from me or my superiors. Did I think twice about employing the gas vans? I couldn't say. At the time the most important consideration for me was the psychological stress felt by the men involved in the shootings. This problem was overcome by the use of gas vans."
Sources: Kogon, Eugen, Hermann Langbein and Adalbert Ruckerl ed. Nazi Mass Murder: A Documentary History of the Use of Poison Gas. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993, p. 53.
Hirschberger depicts a family, presumably innocent but appearing anxious and perhaps despondent, on their way to their last outing. The gas van is metaphorically replaced by a wooden wagon with red wheels. The round object in the upper left suggests an eclipse, or perhaps a tear in the sky, a way for these innocents to ascend to heaven. Note the flat perspective.