Editing Sonderkommando (section)

==Death factory workers==
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-H26996, KZ Dachau, Verbrennungsofen.jpg|thumb|left|250px|Crematorium at [[Dachau concentration camp|Dachau]], May 1945 <small>(photo taken after liberation)</small>]]

''Sonderkommando'' members did not participate directly in killing; that responsibility was reserved for the SS, while the ''Sonderkommandos''{{'}} primary duty<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DzWPL6hjk9MC&pg=PA193|title=People in Auschwitz|last=Langbein|first=Hermann|date=15 December 2005|publisher=Univ of North Carolina Press|isbn=978-0-8078-6363-3|page=193}}</ref> was disposing of the corpses.{{sfn|Sofsky|2013|p=267}} In most cases, they were inducted immediately upon arrival at the camp and forced into the position under threat of death. They were not given any advance notice of the tasks they would have to perform. To their horror, sometimes the ''Sonderkommando'' inductees would discover members of their own family amid the bodies.{{sfn|Sofsky|2013|p=269}} They had no way to refuse or resign other than by committing suicide.{{sfn|Sofsky|2013|p=271}} In some places and environments, the ''Sonderkommandos'' might be euphemistically called ''Arbeitsjuden'' (Jews for work).{{sfn|Sofsky|2013|p=283}} At other times, ''Sonderkommandos'' were called ''Hilflinge'' (helpers).{{sfn|Michael|Doerr|2002|p=209}} At [[Birkenau]] the ''Sonderkommandos'' numbered up to 400 people by 1943 and, when Hungarian Jews were deported there in 1944, their numbers swelled to more than 900 persons, in order to keep up with the increased rounds of murder and extermination.{{sfn|Caplan|Wachsmann|2010|p=73}}

Because the Germans needed the ''Sonderkommandos'' to remain physically able, they were granted much less squalid living conditions than other inmates: they slept in their own barracks and were allowed to keep and use various goods such as food, medicines and cigarettes brought into camp by those who were sent to the gas chambers. Unlike ordinary inmates, they were not normally subject to arbitrary killing by guards. Their livelihood and utility were determined by how efficiently they could keep the Nazi death factory running.{{sfn|Sofsky|2013|pp=271–273}} As a result, ''Sonderkommando'' members survived longer in the death camps than other prisoners{{snd}}but few survived the war.

As they had detailed knowledge of the Nazis' practice of mass murder, the ''Sonderkommando'' were considered ''Geheimnisträger''{{snd}}bearers of secrets. As such, they were held in isolation away from prisoners being used as slave labor (see [[SS Main Economic and Administrative Office]]).{{sfn|Greif|2005|p=4}} There was a belief that every three months, according to SS policy, almost all the ''Sonderkommandos'' working in the death camps' killing areas would be gassed themselves and replaced with new arrivals to ensure secrecy, and that some inmates survived for up to a year or more because they possessed specialist skills.{{sfn|Greif|2005|p=327}} Usually, the task of a new ''Sonderkommando'' unit would be to dispose of the bodies of their predecessors. Research has calculated that from the creation of a death camp's first ''Sonderkommando'' to the liquidation of the camp, there were approximately 14 generations of ''Sonderkommando''.<ref name="autogenerated1993">{{cite book | last=Nyiszli | first=Miklós | title=Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account | publisher=Arcade Pub. Distributed by Little, Brown, and Co. | location=New York Boston | year=1993 | isbn=1-55970-202-8 | oclc=28257456 }}</ref>{{page needed|date=March 2020}} However, according to historian Igor Bartosik, author of ''Witnesses from the Pit of Hell: History of the Auschwitz Sonderkommando'' (2022) published by the [[Auschwitz Museum]], the renewed exterminations of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommandos are a myth, since such an extermination only took place there once. "Nor was it true that prisoners were selected for their technical expertise. After a cursory inspection, they were selected merely in view of their apparent ability to work," wrote Bartosik.<ref>Lebovic, Matt (November 27, 2022) [https://www.timesofisrael.com/myths-about-auschwitz-jewish-sonderkommando-failed-rebellion-busted-in-new-study/ “Myths about Auschwitz Jewish 'Sonderkommando,' failed rebellion busted in new study”] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240403000758/https://www.timesofisrael.com/myths-about-auschwitz-jewish-sonderkommando-failed-rebellion-busted-in-new-study/ |date=3 April 2024 }}, ''[[The Times of Israel]]''</ref>

===Eyewitness testimony===
Fewer than 20 of several thousand members of the ''Sonderkommandos'' are documented to have survived until liberation and to have testified about the events (although some sources claim more).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.hagalil.com/shoah/holocaust/greif-0.htm|title=Auschwitz – Sonderkommando|publisher=Hagalil.com|date=2 May 2000|access-date=30 April 2010|archive-date=15 March 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210315082514/https://www.hagalil.com/shoah/holocaust/greif-0.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> Among them were [[Henryk (Tauber) Fuchsbrunner]], [[Filip Müller]], Daniel Behnnamias, [[Dario Gabbai]], [[Morris Venezia]], [[Shlomo Venezia]], Antonio Boldrin,<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.memoro.org/it/testimone.php?ID=3406 |title=Antonio Boldrin |access-date=2 February 2019 |archive-date=15 March 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210315082443/http://www.memoro.org/it/testimone.php?ID=3406 |url-status=live }}</ref> Alter Fajnzylberg, [[Samuel Willenberg]], Abram Dragon, [[David Olère]], [[Henryk Mandelbaum]] and [[Martin Gray (Holocaust survivor)|Martin Gray]]. Another six or seven are confirmed to have survived, but did not give witness (or at least, such testimony is not documented). Buried and hidden accounts by members of the ''Sonderkommando'' were later found at some camps.<ref>{{cite news 
|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-42144186 
|title=Auschwitz inmate's notes from hell finally revealed 
|work=BBC News 
|first=Laurence 
|last=Peter 
|date=1 December 2017 
|access-date=1 December 2017 
|archive-date=15 March 2021 
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210315082518/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-42144186 
|url-status=live 
}}</ref>

Between 1943 and 1944, some members of the Birkenau ''Sonderkommando'' were able to obtain writing materials and record some of their experiences and what they had witnessed. These documents were buried in the grounds of the crematoria and recovered after the war. Five men have been identified as the authors of these manuscripts: [[Zalman Gradowski]], Zalman Lewental, and [[Leib Langfus]], who wrote in [[Yiddish]]; Chaim Herman, who wrote in French; and [[Marcel Nadjari|Marcel Nadjary]], who wrote in Greek. Of the five, only Nadjary survived until liberation; Gradowski was killed in the revolt at Crematorium IV on 7 October 1944 (see below), or in retaliation for it; Lewental, Langfus, and Herman are believed to have been killed in November 1944.<ref name="chare">{{cite book |last1=Chare |first1=Nicholas |title=Matters of testimony: interpreting the scrolls of Auschwitz |date=1 December 2015 |publisher=Berghahn Books |location=New York |isbn=978-1782389989 |edition=1st |ref=chare}}</ref> Gradowski wrote the following note, found buried at an Auschwitz crematorium site:

{{blockquote|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.<ref>{{cite web | title=Yad Vashem | last=Rutta | first=Matt | website=Rabbinic Rambling | date=23 March 2006 | url=http://mattrutta.blogspot.com/2006/03/yad-vashem.html | access-date=30 April 2007 | archive-date=15 March 2021 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210315082529/http://mattrutta.blogspot.com/2006/03/yad-vashem.html | url-status=live }}</ref>}}

The manuscripts are kept primarily in the archive of the [[Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum|Auschwitz-Birkenau State Memorial Museum]]. Exceptions are Herman's letter (kept in the archives of the ''Amicale des déportés d'Auschwitz-Birkenau'') and Gradowski's texts, one of which is held in the [[Russian Museum of Military Medicine]] in [[St. Petersburg]], and another in [[Yad Vashem]], Israel.<ref>{{cite book |last=Chare |first=Nicholas |title=Auschwitz and Afterimages: Abjection, Witnessing and Representation |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XCcsAQAAMAAJ|date=15 February 2011 |publisher=I. B. Tauri |location=London  |isbn=978-1-84885-591-5}}</ref><ref name="Stone2013">{{cite book |last=Stone |first=Dan |editor1-last=Chare |editor1-first=Nicholas |editor2-last=Williams |editor2-first=Dominic |title=Representing Auschwitz: At the Margins of Testimony |chapter=The Harmony of Barbarism: Locating the Scrolls of Auschwitz in Holocaust Historiography |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OVohAQAAQBAJ |date=19 September 2013 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK |location=Basingstoke |isbn=978-1-137-29769-3 |pages=11–32 |access-date=31 March 2020 |archive-date=7 October 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241007214805/https://books.google.com/books?id=OVohAQAAQBAJ |url-status=live }}</ref>
Some of the manuscripts were published as ''The Scrolls of Auschwitz'', edited by Ber Mark.<ref>{{cite book | last=Mark | first=Bernard | translator-first=Sharon | translator-last=Neemani | title=The Scrolls of Auschwitz | publisher=Am ʻOved Pub. House | location=Tel Aviv | year=1985 | isbn=978-965-13-0252-7 | oclc=13621285 }}</ref> The Auschwitz Museum published some others as ''Amidst a Nightmare of Crime''.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Bezwińska|first1=Jadwiga|last2=Czech|first2=Danuta|translator-last=Michalik|translator-first=Krystyna|title=Amidst a nightmare of crime: Manuscripts of members of Sonderkommando ; Selection and elaboration of manuscripts|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JESFngEACAAJ|year=1973|publisher=Publications of Statue Museum at Oświecim Państwowe Muzeum|location=Oświęcim|access-date=31 March 2020|archive-date=7 October 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241007214805/https://books.google.com/books?id=JESFngEACAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref>

The Scrolls of Auschwitz have been recognised as some of the most important testimony to be written about the Holocaust, as they include contemporaneous eyewitness accounts of the workings of the gas chambers in Birkenau.<ref name="Stone2013" />