|
''Sonderkommandos'' were work units made up of German Nazi death camp prisoners. They were composed almost entirely of Jews who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the disposal of gas chamber victims during the Holocaust.〔Friedländer (2009). ''Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1945'', pp. 355-356.〕〔Shirer (1990). ''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'', p. 970.〕 The death-camp ''Sonderkommandos'', who were always inmates, should not be confused with the ''SS-Sonderkommandos'' which were ''ad hoc'' units formed from various SS offices between 1938 and 1945. The term itself in German means "special unit", and was part of the vague and euphemistic language which the Nazis used to refer to aspects of the Final Solution (cf. ''Einsatzkommando'' units of the ''Einsatzgruppen'' death squads). ==Work, living conditions, and death== ''Sonderkommando'' members did not participate directly in killing; that responsibility was reserved for the guards, while the ''Sonderkommandos'' primary responsibility was disposing of the corpses.〔Sofsky 1996, p. 267.〕 In most cases they were inducted immediately upon arrival at the camp and forced into the position under threat of death. They were not given any advance notice of the tasks they would have to perform. To their horror, sometimes the ''Sonderkommando'' inductees would discover members of their own family amid the bodies.〔Sofsky 1996, p. 269.〕 They had no way to refuse or resign other than by committing suicide.〔Sofsky 1996, p. 271.〕 In some places and environments, the ''Sonderkommandos'' might be euphemistically connoted as ''Arbeitsjuden'' (Jews for work).〔Sofsky 1996, p. 283.〕 Other times, Sonderkommandos were called ''Hilflinge'' (helpers).〔Michael & Doerr (2002). ''Nazi-Deutsch/Nazi-German: An English Lexicon of the Language of the Third Reich'', p. 209.〕 At Birkenau the Sonderkommandos or "special squads" reached up to 400 people by 1943, and when Hungarian Jews were deported there in 1944 — their number swelled to over 900 persons to accommodate the increased rounds of murder and extermination.〔Wachsmann & Caplan, eds. (2010) ''Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany: The New Histories'', p. 73.〕 Because the Germans needed the ''Sonderkommandos'' to remain physically able, they were granted much less squalid living conditions than other inmates: they slept in their own barracks and were allowed to keep and use various goods such as food, medicines and cigarettes brought into camp by those who were sent to the gas chambers. Unlike ordinary inmates, they were not normally subject to arbitrary, random killing by guards. Their livelihood and utility was determined by how efficiently they could keep the Nazi death factory running.〔Sofsky 1996, p. 271-273.〕 As a result, ''Sonderkommando'' members tended to survive longer than other inmates of the death camps — but few survived the war. Because of their intimate knowledge of the process of Nazi mass murder, the ''Sonderkommando'' were considered ''Geheimnisträger'' — bearers of secrets — and as such, they were kept in isolation from other camp inmates, except for those about to enter the gas chambers.〔Griech-Polelle (2005). ''We Wept Without Tears: Interviews with Jewish Survivors of the Auschwitz Sonderkommando'', p. 4.〕 Since the Germans did not want ''Sonderkommandos'' knowledge to reach the outside world, they followed a policy of regularly gassing almost all the Sonderkommando and replacing them with new arrivals at intervals of approximately 3 months and up to a year or more in some cases (special skills might merit longer life).〔Griech-Polelle (2005). ''We Wept Without Tears: Interviews with Jewish Survivors of the Auschwitz Sonderkommando'', p. 327.〕 The first task of the new ''Sonderkommandos'' would be to dispose of their predecessors' corpses. Therefore since the inception of the ''Sonderkommando'' through to the liquidation of the camp there existed approximately 14 generations of ''Sonderkommando'' victims. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sonderkommando」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|