The Auschwitz Sonderkommando

The Auschwitz Sonderkommando, the men forced to work in the gas chambers and crematoria of Birkenau, form one of the most difficult groups of the camp’s prisoners to contemplate. Nonetheless, they have figured in a wide range of considerations of and debates about Auschwitz and the Holocaust in general. This chapter traces how they have figured in discussions of moral compromise, the industrial nature and representability of the Holocaust, and Jewish resistance. In doing so, it shows that understandings of the Sonderkommando are bound up with the specific situation of Auschwitz and the way in which it has been interpreted, not only by historians, but also prisoners, and members of the Sonderkommando themselves.