It all started here, says Wojciech Czapla. In March, death drifted into his city. The surface of the Gleiwitz Canal was littered with fish carcasses, a carpet of corpses covered the red-colored water: thousands and thousands of perch, bream, pike, zander, carp and crucian carp, eyes empty, bellies bloated. The stench, Czapla says, this stench was the most terrible thing he had ever smelled.

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