Grojanowski Report

The Grojanowski Report is an eye-witness account about atrocities in the

We didn’t have to wait long before the next lorry arrived with fresh victims. It was specially constructed. It looked like a normal large lorry, in grey paint, with two hermetically closed rear doors. The inner walls were of steel metal. There weren’t any seats. The floor was covered by a wooden grating, as in public baths, with straw mats on top. Between the driver’s cab and the rear part were two peepholes. With a flashlight one could observe through these peepholes if the victims were already dead. Under the wooden grating were two tubes about 15 centimetres (5.9 in) thick which came out of the cab. The tubes had small openings from which gas poured out. The gas generator was in the cab, where the same driver sat all the time. He wore a uniform of the

SS death’s head units and was about forty years old. There were two such vans.
     When the lorries approached we had to stand at a distance of 5 m from the ditch. The leader of the guard detail was a high-ranking SS man, an absolute sadist and murderer. He ordered that eight men were to open the doors of the lorry. The smell of gas that met us was overpowering.

— Wednesday, 7 January 1942.^[1]

Winer also described the brutal treatment of Sonderkommando prisoners, left alive to dispose of the corpses, and his escape from the camp.[5] Oneg Shabbat group and Winer then copied the report in both Polish and German; they sent the Polish version to the Polish Underground State, while the German copy was meant for the German people, in the hope it would evoke their compassion for the Jews.^[6][7][8] It is unclear what was done with the reports at that point.

Winer subsequently escaped to

See also

• Jan Karski
• Witold Pilecki