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	Sonderkommando
		At Auschwitz, Treblinka, Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno and Sobibor the Nazis established the Sonderkommando, groups of Jewish male prisoners picked for their youth and relative good health whose job was to dispose of corpses from the gas chambers or crematoria.
		At Auschwitz the Sonderkommando working in the crematoria initially numbered 400 men, but the number was raised during the mass murder of Hungarians in 1944 to about 1,000 men.
		At Auschwitz and Birkenau, the Sonderkommando were responsible for sorting the suitcases, packages and other items with which the prisoners arrived on the trains.
	www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org /jsource/Holocaust/Sonderkommando.html (627 words)

	Sonderkommando - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		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.
		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.
		There was a revolt by Sonderkommandos in Treblinka, in which between 150 and 500 prisoners escaped, and a less successful one at Auschwitz in which one of the crematoria was partly destroyed with explosives.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Sonderkommando (504 words)

	The "Sonderkommando"
		he "Sonderkommando" had to "help" the SS, when prisoners undressed before entering the gas chamber, it had to convey the bodies from the gas chambers to the crematory ovens or to pile them, burn them and get rid of the ashes.
		fter the gassing, the "Sonderkommando" also had to clean the gas chamber and sort the remains of the dead people, such as their clothes.
		he influence of the work within the "Sonderkommando" was pernicious to its members: They became hardened, lost any feeling, their physiognomy changed that much, that they looked very much alike in their brutal appearance.
	www.wsg-hist.uni-linz.ac.at /Auschwitz/HTML/Sonderkommando.html (237 words)

	Forschung: Significance, responsibility, challenge: Interviewing the Sonderkommando survivors
		This insufficient historiography of the Sonderkommando showed that historians and other scholars were often led to politically influenced or abstract and theory dependent misinterpretations, due to their limited knowledge about survivors’ testimonies, lacking possibilities to compare between testimonies, lacking overview, especially regarding contexts and numerous gaps of knowledge.
		The daily life within the Sonderkommando, the way they related to each other and to their tormentors, the SS guards: the reality, in which the Sonderkommando members were forced to live and act was without precedence.
		The underground resistance activities of the Sonderkommando, their relations to the "Kampfgruppe Auschwitz" and the preparations for the joint uprising of the resistance groups: In the history of Auschwitz this chapter is relatively unknown.
	www.sonderkommando-studien.de /artikel.php?c=forschung/significance (4138 words)

	Operational Situation Report USSR No.132 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Among those executed by Sonderkommando 4a in the latter half of October 1941 until the date of this report, in addition to a comparatively small number of political functionaries, active Communists, people guilty of sabotage, etc., the larger part were again Jews.
		Sonderkommando 4b is stationed in Poltava, according to a report dated October 16, 1941.
		Everywhere in the area of Sonderkommando 4b, full understanding was shown by the German Army for the activity of the Sonderkommando in connection with the security service and the police.
	www.einsatzgruppenarchives.com /osr132.html (551 words)

	Forschung: Unique Testimonies: The Worldwide Project of “Sonderkommando” testimonies
		My basic attitude was based on a preliminary assumption, that the Sonderkommando prisoners were the “unluckiest of the unlucky” of the prisoners, direct victims of the German evil, brutality and sadism, totally innocent Jews whose fates have taken them to hell on earth, without any possibility of changing it.
		The behavioral patterns of the Sonderkommando people, who were able to carry on with their horrific duties for months or even years, also show us, how strong the power of will and the desire to live can be, even in a hell on earth like Auschwitz.
		The information about the inner life of the Sonderkommando people is the best proof to the ability of the every person to suppress, in times of emergency and war, his sentiments, feelings and morals, and become a living machine, a robot, and to fulfill orders.
	sonderkommando-studien.de /artikel.php?c=forschung/uniquetestimonies (2562 words)

	Untitled (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Once the prisoners were undressed and herded into the Gas Chamber the SonderKommando would wait in the background for the 30-60 minutes for the victims to die of the Zyclon B gas.
		Once all were dead the SonderKommando would enter wearing gas masks and begin the process of removing the bodies from the Chamber, which depending on the number of people who had been on the transport, which could take hours.
		The SonderKommando, in order to hasten the process, would sometimes throw up to 5 people into a furnace at a time, this also caused the furnaces to malfunction and when a furnace got too full, or broke down pits would be used to the rear of crematory 5 to burn the excess.
	history.acusd.edu /gen/st/~mfrazer/sondercommandos.html (691 words)

	Sonderkommando - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Sonderkommandos were work units of Nazi death camp prisoners forced to aid the killing process during The Holocaust.
		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.
		There was a revolt by Sonderkommandos in Treblinka, in which between 150 and 500 prisoners escaped, and a less successful one at Auschwitz in which one of the crematoria was partly destroyed with explosives.
	216.109.125.130 /search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=Sonderkommando&n=100&fr=yfp-t-500&u=en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderkommando&w=sonderkommando&d=BCcdDP4-PSWx&icp=1&.intl=us (671 words)

	Holocaust: Operational Situation Report USSR #132
		Among those executed by Sonderkommando 4a in the latter half of October 1941 until the date of this report, in addition to a comparatively small number of political functionaries, active Communists, people guilty of sabotage, etc., the larger part were again Jews.
		Sonderkommando 4b is stationed in Poltava, according to a report dated October 16, 1941.
		Everywhere in the area of Sonderkommando 4b, full understanding was shown by the German Army for the activity of the Sonderkommando in connection with the security service and the police.
	www.nizkor.org /hweb/orgs/german/einsatzgruppen/osr/osr-132.html (624 words)

	Venik's Aviation News (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		In 1942 the SS Sonderkommando was founded by SS-Oberfuhrer Oskar Dirlewanger - former member of the Freikorps, the French Foreign Legion, the Condor Legion and a convicted rapist - to conduct anti-partisan operations on the Eastern front.
		The SS Sonderkommando, which was granted Divisional status in the last months of the war, was responsible for crushing the Polish uprising in Warsaw and numerous other war crimes.
		After the war a number of the former SS Sonderkommando members were employed by the CIA to staff the newly-established department of the Radio "Liberation" broadcasting in Chechen.
	www.aeronautics.ru /archive/aeronews/conv/article_February_2001_6_163.htm (365 words)

	Sonderkommando 1005 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		In western Byelorussia the "Sonderkommando 1005-Mitte" (led by Max Krahner) was active.
		The Sonderkommando men finally served in Kärnten (Carinthia) in the anti-partisan unit "Einsatzgruppe Iltis" until the end of WW2.
		Criminal offenses of a section of "Sonderkommando 1005", which was responsible for the destruction of mass graves.
	www.deathcamps.org /occupation/1005.html (627 words)

	Operational Situation Reports USSR (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Thus the Sonderkommandos 4a and 7b, as well as their staff, are constantly in the fighting zone and have been exposed on the highways to Russian sniping.
		After consultations in Minsk, Sonderkommando 7a was transferred from the 9th Army HQ, which is to march to the north of Moscow, to the newly formed 4th Armored Army HQ.
		Sonderkommando 7a is joined by a Vorauskommando with translators and persons familiar with Moscow, under the direction of SS-Standartenführer Dr. Six.
	www.einsatzgruppenarchives.com /osr17.html (896 words)

	The Sonderkommando
		The Sonderkommando were Jews who were forced to work in the death camps found at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Belzec.
		At most of the death camps, the Sonderkommando lived 'better' lives than those forced to do work of a more basic nature and they were kept strictly away from other prisoners still alive in the camps.
		After the war ended in 1945, those Sonderkommando who managed to somehow survive the death camps were treated with little compassion.
	www.historylearningsite.co.uk /sonderkommando.htm (489 words)

	Auschwitz - Sonderkommando
		Sonderkommandos was the name given to concentration camp prisoners whose job was to service the assembly lines of death.
		Yisrael Gutman, in his preface to the book, writes that the selection process regarding the Sonderkommando teams was every bit as frightening and horrifying as that which determined which new arrivals would be sent to the gas chambers.
		Many Sonderkommandos never revealed their secrets, both out of shame and the feeling that they would never be believed.
	www.hagalil.com /shoah/holocaust/greif-0.htm (1874 words)

	Resistance (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Just months before the liberation of the camp, when it was already known that the Russian army was approaching, the SS caught wind of the fact that the last of the Sonderkommando--the squads of Jewish prisoners formed to shepherd their fellows to the gas chamber-- were planning an uprising.
		On October 7, 1944, as the SS were forming a detail of three hundred members of the Sonderkommando for some outside work (this was thought to be a ruse to separate and execute them) the Sonderkommando began pelting the SS with stones and drove them off.
		Sonderkommando in other units rose up too; some seized crematorium II and threw an SS man and a kapo into the furnace alive.
	www.spectacle.org /695/resist.html (281 words)

	The Holocaust Odyssey of Daniel Bennahmias, Sonderkommando - Wal-Mart
		The Holocaust Odyssey of Daniel Bennahmias, Sonderkommando - Wal-Mart
		Paperback: The Holocaust Odyssey of Daniel Bennahmias, Sonderkommando
		Your email address will never be sold to a third party.
	www.walmart.com /catalog/product.do?product_id=3171543 (582 words)

	Special Reports
		The "Sonderkommando Künsberg" (Special Unit Künsberg) was one of numerous national socialist organizations, which systematically and on a large scale looted cultural treasures from the USSR in the course of World War II.
		The action of the Sonderkommando should be limited explicitly to the confiscation of records of the embassies and legations.
		Offices of the Sonderkommando Künsberg, where the war booty was prepared for transport, were spread over the entire region of the Soviet Union, from the Baltic States in the North to the Crimea in the South.
	www.dhh-3.de /biblio/bremen/sow2/sonderkommando.html (1163 words)

	Canadian Jewish News (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Sonderkommando units, whose typical lifespan was four months, were charged with the most grisly of tasks: pacifying Jewish inmates, expropriating their valuables, herding them into gas chambers, shovelling their corpses into ovens and disposing of their remains.
		At the end of their shift, the sonderkommandos retire to their quarters as if nothing had happened.
		Urged on by a compassionate doctor who normally is at Mengele's beck and call, the sonderkommandos resolve to conceal her and thus save her from certain death.
	www.cjnews.com /pastIssues/02/oct24-02/tab/tab.htm (702 words)

	NS/Texte/Roccas
		Sonderkommandos was the name given to concentration camp prisoners whose job was to service the assembly lines of death.
		Yisrael Gutman, in his preface to the book, writes that the selection process regarding the Sonderkommando teams was every bit as frightening and horrifying as that which determined which new arrivals would be sent to the gas chambers.
		Many Sonderkommandos never revealed their secrets, both out of shame and the feeling that they would never be believed.
	www.antisemitismus.net /antisemitismus/nationalsozialismus/texte/roccas-02.htm (1891 words)

	washingtonpost.com: 'Grey Zone': Smoke And Mirrors (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Set in Auschwitz in 1944, "The Grey Zone" has to do with the Sonderkommando, the "special squads" of Jews that Nazi officials forced to help with the processing of new arrivals to the camp and, later, with the disposal of their corpses.
		The Sonderkommando, as Primo Levi wrote in his memoir "The Drowned and the Saved," occupied a gray zone of moral reasoning: They agreed to carry out their unspeakable labors under threat of death, with the promise of a few more privileges (alcohol, cigarettes, better food) and a few more months to live.
		In his zeal to tell the story of the Sonderkommando and make it the vehicle for a much larger ethical conversation and push the limits of cinematic storytelling, Nelson creates a movie so complex as to be almost incomprehensible.
	www.washingtonpost.com /ac2/wp-dyn/A14429-2002Oct24?language=printer (961 words)

	Trial of Hauptsturmführer Oscar Hans. United Nations War Crimes Commission. (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		From the beginning of 1941 he was also leader of the Sonderkommando, in which capacity he was in charge of the execution of the death sentences passed by the S.S. und Polizeigericht Nord, the German Standesgerichts and the Feldgerichts.
		As leader of the Sonderkommando he was responsible for the execution of at least 312 Norwegian patriots of whom 68 were executed without previous trial.
		In his capacity as leader of the Sonderkommando the defendant was directly responsible to Fehlis who in his turn was responsible to General Rediess, whose title was “ Gerichtsherr ” and who was in charge of all the police forces in Norway.
	www.ess.uwe.ac.uk /WCC/hans.htm (4598 words)

	Yad Vashem Magazine
		These were the prisoners who cut the women’s hair (before or after gassing), brought out the corpses from the gas chambers, removed gold teeth and fillings, and transferred the bodies for cremation.
		From the ruins of the crematoria, however, some of the Sonderkommando’s diaries were retrieved; in them, they described the daily anguish of being in constant contact with murder.
		The heroism of their actions in their remaining days testifies not only to their agonizing existence, and also to their will to demonstrate to the world that even under the direst of circumstances, their spirits would not be defeated.
	www1.yadvashem.org /about_yad/magazine/magazine_new/mag_35/Their.html (779 words)

	washingtonpost.com: 'The Grey Zone's' Stark Divide
		Once the work of the gas chambers was done, the Sonderkommando cleaned the corpses, removing hair, gold teeth and valuables, then loaded them into crematoriums and finally disposed of the ashes in a nearby river.
		They were also allowed to live a few more months, after which the next Sonderkommando unit was assigned to process their corpses in a grisly ritual of complicity and intimidation.
		The film stars David Arquette and Steve Buscemi as two members of the 12th Sonderkommando unit, which in October 1944 succeeded in fomenting an uprising that destroyed one crematorium and disabled another.
	www.washingtonpost.com /ac2/wp-dyn/A47054-2002Oct18?language=printer (1879 words)

	Magneto and the Holocaust Q&A
		As I said, a few of the Sonderkommandos were left in the camp, and were liberated by the Russians on Jan. 27th.
		"Sonderkommando members in the other crematoria were surprised by the timing of the outbreak.' Without preparation, without the help of the prisoners of the entire camp, and in broad daylight, it was difficult even to believe that someone, even a single individual, would be able to save himself.
		The final dwindling of the Sonderkommando-- "On November 25, at Birkenau, the demolition of Crematorium II was begun.
	www.alara.net /xbooks/magqa.html (3575 words)

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