Henryk Mania
Henryk Mania (born 17 January 1923 in Rakoniewice, died 13 April 2020 in Szczecin) was a Polish laborer and collaborator of Nazi Germany, who served as a kapo in the Chełmno extermination camp.
He was the first Pole to be convicted by a Polish court for participation in Nazi crimes, in a trial where the prosecutor was from the Institute of National Remembrance.
[2] When transports of patients arrived at Fort VII, Mania and his fellow prisoners were responsible for leading the victims to the bunker-gas chamber, sealing its doors, and eventually carrying the bodies to vehicles.
The Sonderkommando then proceeded to exterminate patients at various hospitals and care facilities across the Reichsgau Wartheland (in Dziekanka, Kościan, Gostynin, Kochanówka [pl], Śrem, and Warta).
[6] In late May or early June 1940, the Sonderkommando Lange was sent to the Soldau concentration camp, where SS members murdered 1,558 psychiatric patients from East Prussia.
[7] At one point, Lange visited the eight Polish prisoners in their cell at Fort VII and, displeased with their poor physical condition, provided them with additional food, explaining that they needed to regain their strength for a new task.
[8] In June 1941, the reactivated Sonderkommando Lange resumed the murder of mentally ill patients in the Reichsgau Wartheland, with Mania and his companions once again forced to work as gravediggers.
[9] In September of that year, with the suspension of Aktion T4 and the start of preparations for the "final solution to the Jewish question", the Sonderkommando was transferred to Konin.
During these operations, Mania and his companions dug mass graves, buried the bodies of the victims, and searched their clothes for valuables.
The Sonderkommando, with the Polish prisoners, was then sent to Chełmno nad Nerem, where Lange began organizing a permanent extermination camp.
[15] When mass extermination of Jews began at the camp, Mania's main task became collecting money and valuables that the victims had to surrender as a supposed "deposit", and then issuing them "receipts".
They wore civilian clothing and could move relatively freely around the nearby villages, where they maintained social relationships with local Poles.
According to post-war testimonies from one of the SS men, they were also allowed to sexually exploit young Jewish women taken from the transports on several occasions.
[24] In November 1943, along with three companions from Kulmhof – Lech Jaskólski, Henryk Maliczak, and Kajetan Skrzypczyński – Mania was assigned to Sonderkommando Legath (also known as Wetterkommando).
[25] Mania and the other Poles were responsible for overseeing around 50 Jewish prisoners, who performed work related to exhuming and burning corpses.
The Jewish prisoners were then shot, while Mania and the other three Poles were returned to Fort VII, from where they were later transferred to the penal and investigative camp in Żabikowo.
[19] Meanwhile, in 1949, a resident of Kalisz who had worked as a driver in Koło during the war met a new business partner in Poznań with the surname Mania.
[29] In 1962, a correspondent for the Czechoslovak newspaper Rudé právo requested permission from the Polish Milicja Obywatelska to interview Mania and Henryk Maliczak.
On 14 November 1963, the Security Service in Poznań initiated a pre-investigation inquiry under the August Decree,[3] focusing on the activities of Mania, Maliczak, and other Polish workers at the Kulmhof camp.
[33] On 16 March 2001, Zygmunt Kacprzak, a prosecutor from the Branch Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation in Poznań, filed an indictment against Mania, accusing him, under the August Decree, of complicity in genocide.
[35] He also denied using physical violence against prisoners, stating that his tasks involved searching victims' bodies and transporting wood for burning corpses in the Rzuchów Forest.
[42] The series refers to the history of the Chełmno extermination camp, and the portrait of Mania alludes to the Poznań court's verdict issued in February 2002.
