Members of a Sonderkommando 1005 unit pose next to a bone crushing machine in the Janowska concentration camp.

Sonderkommandos were work units of Nazi death camp prisoners forced to aid the killing process during The Holocaust. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Janowska was a Nazi labor, transit and concentration camp established in September 1941 on the outskirts of Lvov, Poland (today Ukraine). ... Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... A death camp is either a concentration camp, the important (though not necessarily single) function of which is to facilitate mass murder of the people deported into such a camp (such as the Nazis Auschwitz and Majdanek, which acquired their murderous functions only some time after they had been... “Shoah” redirects here. ...

The term itself in German means "special unit" and was part of the vague and euphemistic language which the Nazis used to refer to aspects of the Final Solution (cf. Einsatzgruppen). Euphemism is the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant to the listener; or in the case of doublespeak, to make it less troublesome for the speaker. ... In a February 26, 1942, letter to German diplomat Martin Luther, Reinhard Heydrich follows up on the Wannsee Conference by asking Luther for administrative assistance in the implementation of the Endlösung der Judenfrage (Final Solution of the Jewish Question). ... A member of Einsatzgruppe D is just about to shoot a Jewish man kneeling before a filled mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in 1942. ...

Work and death

Sonderkommando members did not participate directly in the killing (though they did accompany the victims to the gas chambers) — killing was reserved for the guards. Their primary responsibility was disposing of the corpses. They were forced into the position, and accepted it because it meant a few more days or weeks of life, as well as vastly-better living conditions. They would sleep in their own barracks, which more than any other in the camp resembled normal human dwellings; various goods such as food, medicines and cigarettes, plundered from those who were already sent to the gas chambers, were at their disposal. Dr. Miklos Nyiszli noted with irony the fact that the medicines arriving were all in different languages because of Jewish transports coming from every part of Europe. For other uses, see Gas chamber (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Body (disambiguation). ... Miklos Nyiszli (June 17, 1901 in Åžimleu Silvaniei, Romania–May 5, 1956) was a Jewish prisoner doctor at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. ...

Because the Sonderkommandos were privy to information about Nazi methods that the Nazis did not wish to reach the outside world, the groups were murdered at regular intervals; new Sonderkommandos were selected from the subsequent transports. The first task of the new Sonderkommandos would be to dispose of their predecessors' corpses.

There was a revolt by Sonderkommandos at Auschwitz in which one of the crematoria was partly destroyed with explosives. When the camp resistance warned the Sonderkommando that they were due to be murdered on the morning of October 7th, 1944, they attacked the SS and Kapos with axes, knives and home made grenades. Three SS men were killed, including one who was pushed alive into a crematorium oven, and some prisoners escaped from the camp for a period. They were recaptured later the same day. Of those who did not die in the uprising itself, 200 were forced to strip, lie face down, and then were shot in the back of the head. A total of 451 Sonderkommandos were killed on this day. Auschwitz (Konzentrationslager Auschwitz) was the largest of the Nazi German concentration camps. ... Cremation is the practice of disposing of a corpse by burning. ...

There was also an uprising in Treblinka, in which between 150 and 500 prisoners escaped, and a similar uprising in Sobibór About 30 or so of the prisoners from each camp survived the war. The uprising in Sobibor was made into a factual film, Escape from Sobibor, starring Rutger Hauer, amongst others. Treblinka II was a Nazi extermination camp in German-occupied Poland during World War II. Extermination camps like the one at Treblinka were used in the Holocaust for the systematic genocide of people categorized as sub-humans by the Nazis. ... Sobibór was a Nazi German extermination camp that was part of Operation Reinhard, the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor. ... Escape from Sobibor was a made-for-TV movie which aired in 1987 about Sobibór, the site of the only successful uprising by Jewish prisoners from a Nazi extermination camp, also called a death camp. ...

The Sonderkommandos in Sobibór camp III did not take part in the uprising in camp I, and were murdered the following day. Both Sobibor and Treblinka were wound up shortly afterwards. Sobibór was a Nazi German extermination camp that was part of Operation Reinhard, the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor. ...

Very few survived until liberation and were able to testify to the events, and buried or hidden accounts by members of the Sonderkommando were later found at some camps.

Testimonies

In the collection at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, Israel, there are notes from members of the Sonderkommando. The following note was found buried in the Auschwitz crematoria written by Zalman Gradowski, a member of the Sonderkommando and killed in the Sonderkommando Revolt in October of 1944: An exterior view of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem. ... Jerusalem (Modern Hebrew: יְרוּשָׁלַיִם Yerushaláyim, Biblical and trad. ...

"Dear finder of these notes, I have one request of you, which is, in fact, the practical objective for my writing... that my days of Hell, that my hopeless tomorrow will find a purpose in the future. I am transmitting only a part of what happened in the Birkenau-Auschwitz Hell. You will realize what reality looked like... From all this you will have a picture of how our people perished"^[1].

There are several eyewitness accounts from members of the Sonderkommando. Publications include:

• Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, deposition by Henryk Tauber in the Polish Courts, May 24, 1945, p. 481-502, Jean-Claude Pressac, Pressac-Klarsfeld, 1989, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York, Library of Congress 89-81305

• Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers by Filip Müller, Ivan R. Dee, 1979, ISBN 1-56663-271-4

• We Wept Without Tears: Testimonies of the Jewish Sonderkommando from Auschwitz by Gideon Greif, Yale University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-300-10651-3.

• The Holocaust Odyssey of Daniel Bennahmias, Sonderkommando by Rebecca Fromer, University Alabama Press, 2003, ISBN 0-8173-5041-1.

• Auschwitz : A Doctor's Eyewitness Account by Miklos Nyiszli (translated from the original Hungarian), Arcade Publishing, 1993, ISBN 1-55970-202-8. A play and subsequent film about the Sonderkommandos, The Grey Zone (2001) directed by Tim Blake Nelson, was based on this book.

• Dario Gabbai (Interview Code 142, conducted in English) video testimony, interview conducted in November 1996, Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, USC Shoah Foundation Institute, University of Southern California.

Jean-Claude Pressac (1944 - July 23, 2003) was a French chemist and pharmacist who became a published authority on the Holocaust of World War II. Pressac was originally a Holocaust denier, who was involved in disproving what he considered historically inaccurate depictions of the concentration camps Auschwitz and Birkenau as... Eyewitness Auschwitz : Three Years in the Gas Chambers Filip Müller (born 1922, Sered, Czechoslovakia) was one of very few prisoners to have survived Auschwitz, the largest Nazi German extermination camp. ... Gideon Greif (* 1951 in Tel Aviv) is an israeli historian. ... Miklos Nyiszli (June 17, 1901 in Åžimleu Silvaniei, Romania–May 5, 1956) was a Jewish prisoner doctor at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. ... The Grey Zone is a film directed by Tim Blake Nelson, 2001, and stars David Arquette, Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel, Mira Sorvino and Daniel Benzali. ... Year 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 2001 Gregorian calendar). ... Tim Blake Nelson (born May 11, 1964) is an American character actor and film director. ... The Shoah Foundation or Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation or Shoah Visual History Foundation, is a non-profit organization established by Steven Spielberg in 1994, one year after completing the Academy Award-winning film Schindlers List. ... The Trojan Shrine, better known as Tommy Trojan located in the center of University of Southern California campus. ...

See also

• Kommando
• Ala Gertner
• David Olère
• Roza Robota
• Rose Meth
• The Grey Zone

Kommando is a generic German language word meaning unit or command. ... Please wikify (format) this article as suggested in the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style. ... David Olère (January 19, 1902, Warsaw - August 21, 1985, Paris) was a Polish-born French artist best known for his explicit drawings and paintings based on his experiences as a Jewish Sonderkommando inmate of the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. David Olère studied at Warsaws... Roza Robota (1921–January 5, 1945) was one of four women hanged in the Auschwitz concentration camp for their role in the Sonderkommando revolt of October 7, 1944. ... Rose Grunapfel Meth (b. ... The Grey Zone is a film directed by Tim Blake Nelson, 2001, and stars David Arquette, Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel, Mira Sorvino and Daniel Benzali. ...

External links

• (German) short history of the jüdische Sonderkommando - www.sonderkommando-studien.de/ (further content: Zum Begriff Sonderkommando und verwandten Bezeichnungen • „Handlungsräume“ im Sonderkommando Auschwitz. • Der „Sonderkommando-Aufstand“ in Auschwitz-Birkenau - Photos )
• Informations about Auschwitz Sonderkommandos members on the French site Sonderkommando.info

References