Wilhelm Cornides

Wilhelm Cornides (20 July 1920 – 15 July 1966) is primarily known as the author of the Cornides Report, an eyewitness account of the Bełżec extermination camp.

During WWII, Cornides was a Wehrmacht sergeant, serving in the General Government territory. Whilst travelling near the Bełżec extermination camp, he observed Holocaust trains and spoke to local people who were aware that Jews were being murdered in the camp. Shortly afterwards, he was on a train that passed close to the camp and was able to observe it briefly.

The Cornides Report was typewritten on three letter-sized sheets, and eventually published in July 1959, but was overshadowed by the more detailed Gerstein Report.

Holocaust witness

During the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany, Cornides was in Rzeszów (renamed Reichshof), on his way to the city of Chełm (Cholm) by train. He wrote a private journal to pass the time, recording things he would not want to talk about with anyone else.

Diary entries

On 30 August 1942, a German railway policeman told Cornides, that the area would soon be free of Jews (Judenfrei), since every day freight trains packed with Jews from the Generalgouvernement passed through the railway yard, and come back in the evening empty and swept clean. The policeman said he had seen 6,000 Jews from Jarosław (Jaroslau) recently killed in one day.

On 31 August 1942, Cornides took a regular German passenger train from Rzeszów to Chełm and spoke with the other passengers. He arrived at Rawa Ruska junction around noon he made further entries in his journal later that day.

Cornides lounged at the Deutsches Haus in Rawa Ruska before he boarded the connecting train to Chełm the same evening. In the next hour, he made three separate entries in his diary. The first, written at 5.30 pm, stated that what he had learned was extraordinary.

Belzec camp

In his train compartment, Cornides talked to a German woman who had witnessed the round-up of Jews at Chełm and the shooting of those who tried to escape. The railway policeman said: "In the railway documents these trains run under the name of resettlement transports," and added that after the murder of Reinhard Heydrich by Czech resistance members, several trains filled with Czech Jews had passed through. Camp Belzec was located on the railway line. The woman promised to point it out to Cornides when they passed it. The entry in his diary reads:

In his typewritten pages, Cornides also summarized conversations with other Germans he met during his stopover in the Deutsches Haus at Rawa Ruska, as well as statements he remembered from Chełm upon his arrival there.

Post-war life

In December 1946 Cornides became the founder of Europa-Archiv (renamed Internationale Politik in 1995), the first post-war magazine in Allied-occupied Germany. In 1955 he was instrumental along with Theodor Steltzer, Minister-President of Schleswig Holstein and former member of the dissident Kreisau Circle, in founding the German Council on Foreign Relations (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik, DGAP). Through his mother Cäcilie (Cilla) von Oldenbourg, Cornides was a member of the Oldenbourg family, owners of Oldenbourg Verlag publishers; a German publishing house founded in 1858 by Rudolf Oldenbourg.

Emergence of the Cornides Report

The Cornides Report was published in July 1959 by historian Hans Rothfels in the German quarterly Journal of Contemporary History (Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte). The report was typewritten on three letter size sheets.Gilles Karmasyn & PHDN (2009), Facsimiles of Cornides notes with the French introduction. Featuring photocopy of 3 typewritten pages (not the original diary), stamped by Institut fur Zeitgeschichte (ED-81).

Impact of the Cornides Report

By the time the Cornides Report was published, the Gerstein Report which featured details of the extermination process at Belzec was already well known in Germany.Gerstein Report (in English translation) ARC 2006. Retrieved 7 May 2015.

Wilhelm Cornides

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