41 studies / 54 · Łódź-Kochanówka
Kochanówka: Violence and Death Transports from a Łódź Hospital
March 1940 – summer 1941 · Killing patients, camp violence and experiments
A forced transport from a hospital is sometimes portrayed as an administrative act. At Kochanówka, however, witnesses remembered violence against people who could not or would not enter a closed vehicle. Polish and Jewish patients were killed. The surviving accounts allow us to show concrete conduct by perpetrators, but do not justify assigning a single nationality to all victims. [1]
Editorial account based on the sources listed below. Sources checked: 5 September 2026.
- Victims and toll
- More than 500 people murdered in the first operation of 13–15 March 1940; 692 victims in all operations according to findings of the Main Commission cited by the IPN, without a Polish breakdown.
- Perpetrators
- The German occupation apparatus organizing removals and the German hospital management; Herbert Grohmann was named in postwar proceedings.
- Documented methods
- selection of patients · beatings during forced loading · removal in closed vehicles to death
Before the vehicles arrived
The IPN describes a ban on discharging patients and the preparation of lists by nationality, most likely introduced already in 1939. Selections were based on superficial assessment. More than 500 patients were murdered in the first operation, from 13 to 15 March 1940. Further removals followed at the end of March and in the summer of the following year. [1]
What staff members saw
The porter Józef Łabędź, cited by the IPN, described people who resisted being beaten with fists and sticks. Anna Słomczyńska reported patients being packed into a large closed vehicle that returned without passengers. Her observation concerned the transport; it was not eyewitness testimony about the inside of the killing site. That boundary matters: an account of removal must not be turned into a detailed description of agony that the witness did not leave. [1]
Figures and responsibility
A contemporary IPN text cites a total of 692 victims established by the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes. It concerns patients of different nationalities, not 692 Poles. It also describes postwar proceedings by Judge Sabina Krzyżanowska and the failure to punish Herbert Grohmann, who continued his medical career in West Germany. [1]
Limits of the findings
The article is based on one available institutional study citing testimony and Commission findings, not on an independent archival survey. It does not repeat the older figure of 2,200 victims. Accounts of loading are not testimony to every detail of the killing method. [1]
Sources and notes
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opracowanie instytucjonalne. Rocznica zbrodni w Kochanówce. IPN.
Use of this source: Daty akcji, bicie przy załadunku, kategorie ofiar, bilans 692 i brak ukarania Grohmanna.
How we assess sources
The evidence base consists primarily of Polish scholarly publications, investigative findings, archives, museums and documented witness accounts. Reliability is assessed through the document’s provenance, scholarly method and the ability to check the finding. Statements by perpetrators and family accounts of perpetrators require especially critical comparison with other material. Two pages from the same institution may repeat one finding; they are not automatically treated as independent confirmation.
Full methodology