Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp special command

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The Sonderkommando burns corpses in Auschwitz concentration camp, photographed by Alberto Errera , August 1944

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp Sonderkommando was a special work detachment of prisoners . It consisted of Jewish prisoners from the extermination camp who were forced to prepare for the murder of the deportees , plunder them and then cremate their corpses in the crematoria of the Auschwitz concentration camp . The main objective of the concentration camp leadership was to protect the SS personnel from their mental health . At the same time, it wanted to prevent witnesses to the mass murder by shooting the members of the respective Sonderkommando and repeatedly replacing them with other prisoners.

The number of prisoners forced into the Sonderkommando varied widely. In May 1944, when over 350,000 mainly Hungarian Jews were murdered, there were 874 prisoners, while at the end of October that year there were only 100 men. A total of around 2,200 prisoners had to work in the special detachment. Of these, only about 110 survived the end of the war .

tasks

The members of the Sonderkommando had to do the following work:

preparation

After arriving at the “ramp”, after the so-called “ selection ” by doctors, the arriving people were usually led directly to the gas chambers in the crematoria . There they were received by inmates from the Sonderkommando, who had to calm them down and help them undress. The Sonderkommando was not involved in the actual murder in the gas chambers; the poison gas Zyklon B was used by SS personnel.

Pillage

After the murder, the corpses had to be removed from the gas chambers and "recycled". For the prisoners of the Sonderkommando, this meant that they had to search the dead for valuables and pull out their gold teeth. The hair was cut from the female corpses.

Burning the corpses, removing the ashes

In the early days of the extermination campaigns in Birkenau, the bodies were buried in large pits. In order not to leave behind any evidence of the mass murder and to make the number of those killed more difficult to understand, the corpses were later burned in the crematorium ovens. The dead who had already been buried were also exhumed for this purpose . Most of the ash was poured into the Soła , a tributary of the Vistula.

Many prisoners in the Sonderkommando could not withstand the psychological pressure of this activity, committed suicide or lost their minds. At least one inmate is known to have thrown himself into the cremation pit with the corpse he was carrying to commit suicide. The nearby SS man Georg Grünberg shot him.

Uprising and flight

On October 7, 1944, there was an armed uprising by the Sonderkommandos in crematorium III / IV. Before that, there had been at least one failed, similar plan. This time, female prisoners smuggled gunpowder from an arms factory, partially destroying Crematorium IV. The prisoners then attempted a mass escape, but all 250 fugitives were caught and killed by the guards shortly afterwards. As a result, 451 prisoners were murdered, only a small proportion of whom were actively involved.

Together were Ala Gertner , Roza Robota , Regina Safirsztajn and esters Wajcblum on January 5, 1945 Hanging murdered. After months of torture, the four women were “ executed ” in January 1945 a few days before the camp was closed on the roll call square in front of all the prisoners. Calls from the four prisoners were handed down to show that they were morally unbroken. Their uprising and the associated delays in the murder machinery may have saved the lives of many prisoners who would otherwise have been gassed by the SS.

On January 18, 1945, just before the SS evacuated the camp, some prisoners from the Sonderkommando managed to mix with the other prisoners and then flee on the so-called death march . That way they avoided certain death at the last minute.

Photographs of the detail

Four photographs were secretly made by the Greek naval officer Alberto Errera ( Greek Αλβέρτος Ερρέρα ), a member of the special task force for ash removal. Picture 282 shows women before they are gassed, two pictures show masses of corpses that are being cremated. Picture 283 is a miss shot in the trees.

Reconstruction of the negative strip by Alberto Errera , 1944

Discussions

The uprising of October 7, 1944 was, as the surviving members of the Sonderkommando testify and the manuscripts found, an act of desperation that had not been prepared, had not been discussed and was not borne by all prisoners of the Sonderkommando.

The fact that the prisoners of the Sonderkommando were just as victims as all other prisoners was occasionally denied to them (especially by other survivors of the concentration camps). They were accused of having served the mass murderers and supported the Holocaust in order to save or prolong their lives . However, the members of the Sonderkommando were aware that they could not prevent the mass murder. According to eyewitness reports, detainees from the Sonderkommando who informed the unsuspecting victims of their fate were burned alive in the crematoria. Therefore, according to their own admission, members of the Sonderkommando saw their resistance in the documentation of the events and in their own survival in order to be able to report them. Some of the inmates had written reports or diaries of the events and buried them; some of these testimonies were recovered after the war .

Former members of the SS guards also assumed they were involved in the criminal offense in order to exonerate themselves, since it was not they who had committed various cruel acts themselves, but prisoners of the Sonderkommando. In the course of the historical work-up since the 1970s, the prisoners of the Sonderkommando have been rehabilitated.

Documents of the Sonderkommando and later victim reports

Diaries and reports in Yiddish by Salmen Gradowski , Lejb Langfuß and Salmen Lewenthal as well as others by Chaim Herman (in French) and Marcel Nadjari (in Greek), which they buried on the camp grounds, have been handed down in writing . Only Nadjari could survive.

Later victim reports by former Sonderkommando prisoners were made known by:

Shlomo Dragon , Daniel Behnnamias, Milton Buki , Alter Feinsilber, Henryk Mandelbaum , Filip Müller , Dr. Miklós Nyiszli , Dov Paisikovic , Sam Pivnik , Jakow Silberberg, Henryk Tauber, Chaim Wolnerman, Shlomo Venezia , Jehoshua Rosenblum and Jeheszwa Wygodzki. As a pathologist in the section room of Crematorium II, Miklós Nyiszli was forced to work with Mengele .

David Olère was a Jewish painter of Polish descent. His work is dedicated to the Holocaust.

literature

  • In the midst of horrific crime. Manuscripts from members of the Sonderkommando. Translated by Herta Henschel and Jochen August . Publishing house of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Oświęcim 1996, ISBN 83-85047-56-5 .
  • Eric Friedler, Barbara Siebert, Andreas Kilian: Witnesses from the death zone. The Jewish Sonderkommando in Auschwitz . Revised edition, dtv, Munich 2005, ISBN 978-3-423-34158-5 .
  • Gideon Greif : "We wept without tears ..." Eyewitness reports from the Jewish "Sonderkommando" in Auschwitz. Böhlau, Cologne 1995; again Fischer TB 13914, Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-596-13914-7 .
  • Gideon Greif, Itamar Levin: Uprising in Auschwitz: the revolt of the Jewish "Sonderkommando" on October 7, 1944 . Translated from the Hebrew by Beatrice Greif. Böhlau, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-412-22473-8 .
  • Review: Insight. Bulletin of the Fritz Bauer Institute , 15, 2016 ISSN  1868-4211 p. 62f. By Jochen August.
  • Gideon Greif: Levels of Confrontation in Understanding and Awareness of the Shoah in Israeli Society, 1945 - 2002 , in: psychosocial No. 93 (issue 3/2003).
  • Sonja Knopp: "We lived in the midst of death." The "Sonderkommando in Auschwitz in written and verbal prisoner memories , Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-631-59297-7 .
  • Philippe Mesnard: Des voix sous la cendre: Manuscripts of the Sonderkommandos d'Auschwitz-Birkenau , Calmann-Lévy / Mémorial de la Shoah, 2005 ISBN 2-7021-3557-9 ; as TB 2006 (French).
  • Filip Müller : Special treatment. Three years in the crematoria and gas chambers of Auschwitz , Munich 1979.
  • Miklós Nyiszli : Dr. Mengele boncoloorvosa voltam az Auschwitz-i krematoriumban . Debrecen 1946 (Hungarian, translated into many languages).
  • Miklós Nyiszli: In the beyond humanity. A coroner in Auschwitz. Edited by Friedrich Herber. Berlin, 1992; edit Berlin: Dietz, 2005. ISBN 3-320-02061-7 .
  • Pavel Polian : Reading the unread. The records of Marcel Nadjari, member of the Jewish special command of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and their development. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 65 (2017, issue 4), pp. 597–618, images in the supplement provided by Aleksandr Nikitjaev, Tula, Russia.
  • Pavel Polian: Letters from Hell. The records of the Jewish Sonderkommando Auschwitz , Wbg Theiss, Darmstadt 2019
  • Shlomo Venezia : Special: Dans l'enfer des chambres à gaz , Albin Michel, 2007. ISBN 978-2-226-17593-9 (French).
  • Protocol of the interrogation of Szlama Dragon on May 10, 11 and 17, 1945 in Oświęcim, in: Franciszek Piper : The number of victims of Auschwitz . Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum 1993, ISBN 83-85047-17-4 .
  • Bruno Baum : Resistance in Auschwitz. Report of the international anti-fascist camp administration. VVN , Berlin 1949, pp. 19-22; exp. New edition Kongress, Berlin 1957, 1962, pp. 74-77 (this edition without the subtitle).
  • Miriam Yegane Arani: The photographs of the “Sonderkommando Auschwitz” , in: Gerhard Paul : The Century of Images. Picture atlas . Volume 1. 1900 to 1949 . Göttingen: V&R, 2009, pp. 658–665.

media

  • Die Grauzone (Orig: The Gray zone) (2001), directed by Tim Blake Nelson based on the book by Miklós Nyiszli
  • A Simple Man (1978); Director: Karl Fruchtmann , documentary about the special detainee prisoner Jakow Silberberg
  • The Auschwitz Trial. Tape recordings [...] . Edited by the Fritz Bauer Institute Frankfurt a. M. DVD-ROM. ISBN 3-89853-501-0 (including interrogations of Sonderkommando prisoners Dow Paisikovic and Filip Müller)
  • Emil Weiss (director): Auschwitz-Birkenau special command. France, 2007, 52 min, color. Documentation. (The film combines the reports and voices of contemporary witnesses with calm shots of the ruins, the meadows and the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial.)
  • Son of Saul (2015): Hungarian drama by László Nemes Jeles , won the Oscar for best foreign language film in 2016.
  • Eric Friedler : Slaves of the gas chamber (The film shows a meeting of Shlomo Venezia and Henryk Mandelbaum in Rome.)

Web links

References and comments

  1. ^ Ernst Klee : Auschwitz . Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. S. Fischer, Frankfurt / Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-039333-3 , p. 153.
  2. ↑ Gideon Greif: We wept without tears ... , p. 195f
  3. ↑ jewishgen.org names: Ella Gärtner , Rózia Robota , Ruzia and Dorka Sapirsztajn . This should (and was) used to make grenades. They smuggled the explosives out of the factory by sewing it into the hems of their clothes. After the failure and torture of the SS on the gallows, they died in front of all the other prisoners. See www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/bedzin (Eng.). According to another source, it was Estera Wajsblum (Warszawa), Regina Saphirstein (Bedzin), Roza Robota (Bedzin) and Ala Gartner (Sosnowiec). See Shmuel Krakowski: The unimaginable fight , in: Barbara Distel (Ed.): Women in the Holocaust Gerlingen 2001, pp. 289-300.
  4. ^ Fritz Bauer Institute, Dossier 1, 1994 Werner Renz: Der Aufstand des Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-Birkenau , pp. 8/9.
  5. ↑ Kateřina Čapková in Theresienstadt Studies and Documents No. 6/1999, pp. 105–111, The Testimony of Salmen Gradowski.
  6. ↑ Miklos Nyiszli: In the Beyond Humanity. A coroner in Auschwitz. Berlin, Dietz 2005 (2nd, extended edition). ISBN 978-3-320-02061-3 .
  7. ↑ also contains some minor corrections to the book