Sonderkommandos 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. 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.
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.
Crematorium at Dachau, May 1945 (photo taken after liberation)
Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-Birkenau, August 1944 (clandestine photo)
Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-Birkenau, August 1944 (clandestine photo)
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps, also called death camps, or killing centers, in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million people – mostly Jews – in the Holocaust. The victims of death camps were primarily murdered by gassing, either in permanent installations constructed for this specific purpose, or by means of gas vans. The six extermination camps were Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Extermination through labour was also used at the Auschwitz and Majdanek death camps. Millions were also murdered in concentration camps, in the Aktion T4, or directly on site.
Extermination camp
Two of the four crematoria at Auschwitz II (Birkenau).
Members of the Sonderkommando burned the bodies of victims in the fire pits at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, when the crematoria were overloaded. (August 1944)
Jewish children during deportation to the Chełmno extermination camp