The Grojanowski Report was written by Szlamek Bajler, under the pseudonym of Yakov (or Jacob) Grojanowski, who escaped from the Chełmno extermination camp and described in detail the atrocities that he witnessed there.[1]
Bajler, who managed to make his way from Chelmno to the Warsaw Ghetto, gave detailed information about his death camp experience to the ghetto's Oneg Shabbat group, headed by Emanuel Ringelblum. He described the entire extermination procedure at the camp: how people were murdered in gas vans, how their corpses were removed, how the inside of the vans was cleaned, and how the bodies were buried in large pits.[2] Bajler also described his escape from the camp, the bleak conditions of the prisoners forced to deal with the dead, and the brutality of the murderers.[3] Oneg Shabbat and Bajler then wrote up the report in both Polish and German; they sent the Polish version to the Delegatura, the underground representatives of the Polish government-in-exile, while the German copy was meant for the German people, in the assumption it would evoke their compassion for the Jews.[4][5][6]
Bajler subsequently escaped to Zamość where he wrote to the Warsaw Ghetto of the existence of a death camp in Bełżec.[7] A few days after writing this letter, towards the end of April 1942, he was rounded up, deported and gassed at the Belzec extermination camp.[8]
Another escaped inmate from Chelmno, Mordechaï Podchlebnik, managed to survive the war, and in 1961 gave testimony at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem.[9][10]