Wilhelm Cornides

Wilhelm Cornides

German wartime map showing Cornides' route.

Wilhelm Cornides (July 20, 1920 – July 15, 1966) was a Wehrmacht sergeant in World War II known as the author of the Cornides Report, a report concerning his first hand experience of the extermination of Jews at the Belzec concentration camp. He was the founder of Europa-Archiv (renamed Internationale Politik in 1995), the first post-war publication in Occupied Germany in Dec. 1946. In 1955 he was instrumental along with Theodor Steltzer, Minister-President of Schleswig Holstein and former member of the Kreisau Circle with founding the German Council on Foreign Relations, known by the acronym DGAP, for its German spelling (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik). Cornides was a member of the Oldenbourg family, owners of R. Oldenbourg Verlag (publishers). A German publishing house started in 1858 by Rudolf Oldenbourg.

Holocaust witness

On August 30, 1942 Cornides, was in the Rzeszów rail station, on his way to Chełm by train. In his journal he wrote that a railway policeman had told him that ‘a marble plaque with golden letters will be erected on 1 September, because then the city will be "Judenfrei" (free of Jews). The policeman also told him that trains filled with Jews "pass almost daily through the shunting yards, are dispatched immediately on their way, and return swept clean, most often the same evening." Some 6,000 Jews from Jarosław, were recently killed in one day."

Cornides took a regular passenger train from Rzeszów to Chełm, he arrived in Rawa Ruska on August 31, and made further entries in his journal;

"At ten minutes past noon I saw a transport train run into the station. On the roof and running boards sat guards with rifles. One could see from a distance that the cars were jammed full of people. I turned and walked along the whole train: it consisted of 35 cattle cars and one passenger car. In each of the cars there were at least 60 Jews (in the case of the enlisted men's or prisoner transports these wagons would hold 40 men; however, the benches had been removed and one could see that those who were locked in here had to stand pressed together). Some of the doors were opened a crack, the windows criss-crossed with barbed wire. Among the locked-in people there were a few men and most of those were old; everything else was women, girls and children. Many children crowded at the windows and the narrow door openings. The youngest were surely not more than two years old.

World War II era Reichsbahn passenger car.

As soon as the train halted, the Jews attempted to pass out bottles in order to get water. The train, however, was surrounded by SS guards, so that no one could come near. At that moment a train arrived from the direction of Jarosław; the travellers streamed toward the exit without bothering about the transport. A few Jews who were busy loading a car for the armed forces waved their caps to the locked-in people.

A Reichsbahn "goods wagon", one of the types used for deportations.

I talked to a policeman on duty at the railway station. Upon my question as to where the Jews actually came from, he answered: "Those are probably the last ones from Lwów. That has been going on now for three weeks uninterruptedly. In Jarosław they only let eight remain, no one knows why." I asked: "How far are they going?" Then he said: "To Belzec." "And then?" "Poison." I asked: "Gas?" He shrugged his shoulders. Then he said only: "At the beginning they always shot them, I believe."

The things he learned on this journey were so extraordinary that he made three separate entries in his diary within an hour. The first entry made at 5.30 pm.

“When we boarded at 4.40pm an entry transport had just arrived. I walked along the train twice and counted 56 cars. On the doors had been written in chalk 60, 70, once 90, occasionally 40 – obviously the number of Jews inside the cattle cars. In my compartment I spoke with a railway policeman’s wife who was visiting her husband here. She says these transports are now passing through daily, sometimes also with German Jews. Yesterday six children’s bodies were found along the track.

The woman thinks that the Jews themselves had killed these children – but they must have succumbed during the trip. The railway policeman who was escorting the train joined us in our compartment. He confirmed the woman’s statement about the children’s bodies which were found along the track yesterday. I asked.

Belzec camp

Location of Bełżec (lower centre) on the map of German extermination camps marked with black and white skulls

Belzec extermination camp SS staff, 1942

Belzec extermination camp railway sidings

“Do the Jews know what is happening to them? The woman answered “Those who come from far won’t know anything, but here in the vicinity they know already. They attempt to run away, if they notice that someone is coming for them. So for example, most recently in Chelm, three were shot on the way through the city.” “In the railway documents these trains run under the name of resettlement transports,” remarked the railway policeman. He then said that after the murder of Reinhard Heydrich several transports containing Czechs had passed through. Camp Belzec is supposed to be located right on the railway line and the woman promised to show it to me when we pass it. 5.40pm – a short halt. Opposite us a transport again stops. I speak with the policeman in front of the compartment we ride in. I ask. “Are you going back home to the Reich?” Grinning – he says. “You probably know where we are coming from. Well for us the work is never finished.” Then the transport opposite us moves away, 35 empty and cleaned wagons. In all probability this was the train that I had seen at 1pm at Rawa Ruska station. 6.20pm – we passed Camp Belzec. Before then, we travelled for some time through a tall pine forest. When the woman called “Now it comes.” One could see a high hedge of fir trees. A strong sweetish odour could be made out distinctly. “But they are stinking already.” – says the woman.' “Oh nonsense it is only the gas” – the railway policeman said laughing. Meanwhile – we had gone about 200 meters – the sweetish odour was transformed into a strong smell of something burning. “That is from the crematory” – said the policeman. A short distance further on the fence stopped. In front of it one could see a guard house with an SS post. A double track led into the camp. One track branched off from the main line the other ran over a turntable from the camp to a row of sheds some 250 meters away. A freight car happened to stand on the turntable. Several Jews were busy turning the turntable – SS guards rifles under their arms, stood by. One of the sheds was open, one could distinctly see that it was filled to the ceiling with bundles of clothes. As we went on , I looked back one more time – the fence was too high to see anything at all. The woman says “that sometimes, while going by one could see smoke rising from the camp, but I did not notice anything of the sort. My estimate is that the camp measures about 800 meters by 400 meters.

In his diary Wilhelm Cornides recorded conversations he had with other witnesses:

On the evening of 30 August 1942 in the Deutsches Haus in Rawa Ruska, an engineer told me: “Apart from Poles and Prisoners of War, Jews, who in the main have since been transported, were also employed in connection with the work on the troop drill ground, which is situated here. The work of these building crews – which included women, achieved 30% of the level of productivity of German workers on average. Whilst some people received bread from us, others had to find it for themselves. By chance I recently saw the loading of such a transport in Lemberg (Lvow). The railroad cars stood at the foot of an embankment. Using sticks and riding whips the SS men drove and pushed the people into the wagons. That was a sight which I will not forget as long as I live.” Tears welled in the eyes of the man as he told his story. He was approximately 26 years of age, wearing the party badge A Sudeten German building foreman who sat at the same table added: “Recently a drunken SS man sat in our cafeteria, howling like a child. He said that he was serving in Belzec and that if things carried on like this for another 14 days he would kill himself, because he could no longer bear it.” A policeman in the town-hall restaurant in Colm (Chelm) on 1 September 1942 said: “The policemen who guard the Jewish transports are not allowed inside the camp only the SS and the Ukrainian Sonderdienst – a police formation comprising of Ukrainian auxiliaries – do so. Thereby, they have created a good business. Recently a Ukrainian was here who had a great wad of notes, clocks and gold – everything imaginable.

See also

• Gerstein Report
• The Holocaust
• Belzec extermination camp

External links

• Cornides report
• Cornides Notes
• Deportations to Belzec Arad, pp. 383-389
• DGAP
• International Politik English version