Editing Schutzstaffel (section)

===<span id="Special_action_units"></span> ''SS-Sonderkommandos''===
{{about|the units within the SS|the Jewish inmates of death camps who were forced to assist in camp operations|Sonderkommandos|section=yes}}
Beginning in 1938 and throughout World War II, the SS enacted a procedure where offices and units of the SS could form smaller sub-units, known as ''SS-Sonderkommandos'', to carry out special tasks, including large-scale murder operations. The use of ''SS-Sonderkommandos'' was widespread. According to former SS-''[[Sturmbannführer]]'' [[Wilhelm Höttl]], not even the SS leadership knew how many ''SS-Sonderkommandos'' were constantly being formed, disbanded, and reformed for various tasks, especially on the Eastern Front.{{sfn|Diner|2006|p=123}}

An ''SS-Sonderkommando'' unit led by SS-''Sturmbannführer'' [[Herbert Lange]] murdered 1,201 psychiatric patients at the [[Nowy Dwór Gdański|Tiegenhof]] psychiatric hospital in the [[Free City of Danzig]],{{sfn|Laqueur|Baumel|2001|p=228}} 1,100 patients in [[Owińska]], 2,750 patients at [[Kościan]], and 1,558 patients at [[Działdowo]], as well as hundreds of Poles at [[Fort VII]], where the mobile gas van and gassing bunker were developed.{{sfn|Montague|2012|pp=188–190}}{{sfn|Friedlander|1997|p=138}} In 1941–42, ''SS-Sonderkommando Lange'' set up and managed the first extermination camp, at [[Chełmno extermination camp|Chełmno]], where 152,000 Jews were killed using gas vans.{{sfn|Stackelberg|2007|p=220}}

After the [[Battle of Stalingrad]] ended in February 1943, Himmler realised that Germany would likely lose the war and ordered the formation of [[Sonderaktion 1005|'' Sonderkommando'' 1005]], a special task force under SS-''[[Standartenführer]]'' [[Paul Blobel]]. The unit's assignment was to visit mass graves on the Eastern Front to exhume bodies and burn them in an attempt to cover up the genocide. The task remained unfinished at the end of the war, and many mass graves remain unmarked and unexcavated.{{sfn|Rhodes|2003|pp=258–260, 262}}

The ''Eichmann Sonderkommando'' was a task force headed by [[Adolf Eichmann]] that arrived in Budapest on 19 March 1944, the same day that [[German invasion of Hungary (1944)|Axis forces invaded Hungary]]. Their task was to take a direct role in the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. The ''SS-Sonderkommandos'' enlisted the aid of antisemitic elements from the Hungarian gendarmerie and pro-German administrators from within the Hungarian Interior Ministry.{{sfn|Laqueur|Baumel|2001|p=195}} Round-ups began on 16 April, and from 14 May, four trains of 3,000 Jews per day left Hungary and travelled to the camp at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, arriving along a newly built spur line that terminated a few hundred metres from the gas chambers.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=408}}{{sfn|Cesarani|2005|pp=168, 172}} Between 10 and 25 per cent of the people on each train were chosen as forced labourers; the rest were killed within hours of arrival.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=408}}{{sfn|Cesarani|2005|p=173}} Under international pressure, the Hungarian government halted deportations on 6 July 1944, by which time over 437,000 of Hungary's 725,000 Jews had been murdered.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=408}}{{sfn|Cesarani|2005|pp=160, 183}}