For other uses, see Sonderkommando (disambiguation).
Sonderkommando
Survivors of Sonderkommando 1005 posing next to a bone-crushing machine at the site of the Janowska concentration camp. Photograph taken following the liberation of the camp.
Location
German-occupied Europe
Date
1942–1945
Incident type
Removal of Holocaust evidence
Perpetrators
Schutzstaffel (SS)
Participants
Arbeitsjuden
Camp
Extermination camps including Auschwitz, Belzec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór and Treblinka among others
Survivors
Filip Müller, Henryk Tauber, Morris Venezia, Henryk Mandelbaum, Dario Gabbai, Antonio Boldrin
Sonderkommandos (German:[ˈzɔndɐkɔˌmando], special unit) were work units made up of German Nazi death camp prisoners. They were composed of prisoners, usually Jews, who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the disposal of gas chamber victims during the Holocaust.[1][2] The death-camp Sonderkommandos, who were always inmates, were unrelated to the SS-Sonderkommandos, which were ad hoc units formed from members of various SS offices between 1938 and 1945.
The German term was part of the vague and euphemistic language which the Nazis used to refer to aspects of the Final Solution (e.g., Einsatzkommando, "deployment units").
Sonderkommandos (German: [ˈzɔndɐkɔˌmando], special unit) were work units made up of German Nazi death camp prisoners. They were composed of prisoners...
The Sonderkommando photographs are four blurred photographs taken secretly in August 1944 inside the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland...
sub-units, known as SS-Sonderkommandos, to carry out special tasks, including large-scale murder operations. The use of SS-Sonderkommandos was widespread. According...
Sonderkommando "Elbe" was the name of a World War II Luftwaffe task force assigned to bring down heavy bombers by ramming them in mid-air. Its sole mission...
under control of the SS. Accordingly, the unit name was changed to Sonderkommando Dirlewanger ("Special Unit Dirlewanger"). As the unit strength grew...
prisoners tried to escape, 144 successfully, and on 7 October 1944, two Sonderkommando units, consisting of prisoners who operated the gas chambers, launched...
company of Waffen-SS attached to Einsatzgruppe C under Rasch, members of Sonderkommando 4a under SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, and some Ukrainian...
Sonderkommando Blaich (Special Command Blaich) was a German unit consisting of a Heinkel He 111H medium bomber supported by an Italian Savoia-Marchetti...
contained gas chambers, mass graves, and special separate housing for the Sonderkommando prisoners who worked there. Lager IV (also called the Nordlager) was...
all Jews in the General Government occupied zone of Poland. Groups of Sonderkommando prisoners, officially called Leichenkommandos ("corpse units"), were...
Auschwitz. Only seven Jews performing slave labour with the camp's Sonderkommando survived World War II; and only Rudolf Reder became known, thanks to...
Operation Schamil was a code-name for a German Abwehr operation to airdrop special forces ahead of the main attacking force against the Soviet town of...
soap. According to Peter Longerich, "Dirlewanger's leadership of the Sonderkommando was characterized by continued alcohol abuse, looting, sadistic atrocities...
Trawnikis – auxiliaries mostly from Soviet Ukraine, and up to one thousand Sonderkommando slave labourers each. The Jewish men, women and children were delivered...
far behind the advancing German front. Einsatzkommandos, along with Sonderkommandos, were responsible for the systematic murder of Jews during the aftermath...
Jew and Holocaust survivor, notable for his role as a member of the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz. He was deported to the camp in March 1944 and put to work...
Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle was a German special commission that was created by German High Command in November 1942, in response to the capture of two...
We Wept Without Tears: Testimonies of the Jewish Sonderkommando from Auschwitz, is a book by Gideon Greif. First published in Hebrew in 1999, the work...
of Saul Ausländer (played by Géza Röhrig), a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando. The film premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the...
Holocaust survivor Primo Levi. The film tells the story of the Jewish Sonderkommando XII in Auschwitz in October 1944. These prisoners were made to assist...
The Arajs Kommando (also: Sonderkommando Arajs; Latvian: Arāja komanda), led by SS commander and Nazi collaborator Viktors Arājs, was a unit of Latvian...
of the Auschwitz concentration camp. A member of the special squads, Sonderkommando, he was one of the few remaining eyewitnesses to the gas chambers at...
a member of the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-Birkenau from May to August 1944. He took part in the preparation of the Sonderkommando Uprising of 1944...
Sonderkommando 2000 was a German counter intelligence unit established in Greece during its occupation by the Axis in WW II. It was based in Thessaloniki...
extermination camp (Vernichtungslager), referred to euphemistically as the SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka by the Nazis. A small number of Jewish men who were not murdered...
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