Sonderkommando
''Sonderkommandos'' (, ) were Extermination through labor, work units made up of Nazi Germany, 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. The German term was part of the vague and euphemism, euphemistic language which the Nazis used to refer to aspects of the Final Solution (e.g., ''Einsatzkommando'', "deployment units"). Death factory workers ''Sonderkommando'' members did not participate directly in killing; that responsibility was reserved for the SS, while the ''Sonderkommandos'' primary duty was disposing of the corpses. In most cases, they were inducted immediately upon arrival at the camp and forced into the position ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dario Gabbai
David Dario Gabbai (September 2, 1922 – March 25, 2020) was a Greece, Greek Sephardi Jews, Sephardi Jews, Jew and List of Holocaust survivors, Holocaust survivor, notable for his role as a member of the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz concentration camp, Auschwitz. He was deported to the camp in March 1944 and put to work in one of the crematoria at Birkenau, where he was forced to assist in burning the bodies of hundreds of thousands of History of the Jews in Hungary, Hungarian Jews that were deported to the camp during the spring and summer of that year. Gabbai remained at Auschwitz until its evacuation in January 1945. He was liberated from Ebensee concentration camp in Austria by the United States Army, and spoke publicly about what he witnessed and experienced during the Holocaust. He was the last of the known survivors of the Sonderkommando. Deportation Gabbai was born in Thessaloniki to a Greek mother and an Italian father and was educated in Italian schools in Greece. At t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Morris Venezia
Maurice Venezia (25 February 1921 – 2 September 2013), later Morris Venezia, was an Italian-Greek Jewish survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp. A member of the special squads, Sonderkommando, he was one of the few remaining eyewitnesses to the gas chambers at the time of his death. He was the brother of Shlomo Venezia. After the end of World War II, he lived in California. Biography Venezia was descended from Sephardi Jews who were expelled from Spain in 1492 (with the Alhambra Decree) and traveled throughout Europe before settling in Greek Macedonia, under the Ottoman Empire. While residing in the Republic of Venice, the Venezia family acquired the last name ''Venezia'' (Venice) and Italian citizenship. In Thessaloniki Morris's family - with scarce economic means - was part of the community of Italian Jews; the children attended the Italian school in Thessaloniki (a school aligned to the Italian prevailing Fascist doctrine). His father, Isacco Venezia, a barber, h ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Birkenau
Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of #Auschwitz I, Auschwitz I, the main camp (''Stammlager'') in Oświęcim; #Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers, #Auschwitz III, Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a Arbeitslager, labour camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben, and List of subcamps of Auschwitz, dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis' final solution, Final Solution to the Jewish question. After Germany Causes of World War II#Invasion of Poland, initiated World War II by Invasion of Poland, invading Poland in September 1939, the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp. The initial transpo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Henryk Tauber
''Henryk (Tauber) Fuchsbrunner'' (8 July 1917 – 3 January 2000) was a Polish Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp during the Holocaust, who gave detailed testimony at the end of World War II. Tauber was his mother's maiden name. His parents were married by a rabbi and never filed for a civil licence due to quotas on the number of Jewish marriages in Galicia then under Austrian rule. Henryks father's name was Abraham Fuchsbrunner and Fuchsbrunner was the name by which he was known. Henryk Fuchsbrunner shortened his name to Henry Fuchs after he arrived in the United States in 1952. Fuchsbrunner was one of five children. He lived with his extended family in Chrzanów in south Poland before the outbreak of war. After several deportations, Tauber arrived at the Kraków Ghetto. After avoiding capture by the Germans for over 3 years, he was arrested in November 1942 and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Shortly after arriving at Auschwitz, he was selected for work ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sobibór Extermination Camp
Sobibor ( ; ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland. As an extermination camp rather than a concentration camp, Sobibor existed for the sole purpose of murdering Jews. The vast majority of prisoners were gassed within hours of arrival. Those not killed immediately were forced to assist in the operation of the camp, and few survived more than a few months. In total, some 170,000 to 250,000 people were murdered at Sobibor, making it the fourth-deadliest Nazi camp after Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Belzec. The camp ceased operation after a prisoner revolt which took place on 14 October 1943. The plan for the revolt involved two phases. In the first phase, teams of prisoners were to discreetly assassinate each of the SS officers. In the second phase, all 600 prisoners would assemble for evening roll ca ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Henryk Mandelbaum
Henryk Mandelbaum (15 December 1922 – 17 June 2008) was a Polish Holocaust survivor. He was one of the prisoners in the ''Sonderkommando KL Auschwitz-Birkenau'' in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp who worked in the crematory. Only 110 out of 2,000 Sonderkommandos in Auschwitz-Birkenau survived the war. As of the death of Dario Gabbai in 2020, no former Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommandos are known to be alive. Mandelbaum was imprisoned as a Polish Jew at the age of 21 years. He fled from the Sosnowiec Ghetto and was reimprisoned on 22 April 1944, in Birkenau. Auschwitz After arriving to Auschwitz, Mandelbaum was designated to forced labour in the crematory. He had to carry the corpses of the people who were gassed with Zyklon B, check body orifices for valuables and break out dental gold. In 1944 the capacity of the crematoriums was too small to burn all the corpses of prisoners killed. Mandelbaum and others had to dig two huge pits, then burn the dead bodies in them ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Filip Müller
Filip Müller (3 January 1922 – 9 November 2013) was a Jewish Slovak Holocaust survivor and a member of the ''Sonderkommando'' at Auschwitz, the largest Nazi German concentration camp during World War II, where he witnessed the murders of tens of thousands of people. Auschwitz Müller was born in Sereď in the Czechoslovak Republic. In April 1942, he was sent on one of the earliest Holocaust transports to Auschwitz II, where he was given prisoner number 29236. Müller was assigned to the ''Sonderkommando'' that worked on the construction of crematoria and the installation of the gas chambers. Once the crematoria were completed, Müller was assigned to a ''Sonderkommando'' unit tasked with operating the killing facilities; his performing this role, he believed, was the only reason the Germans kept him alive. Müller's unit would meet new arrivals of men, women, and children at the undressing area just outside the gas chambers, in the basement of the crematoria. He testifi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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SS-Sonderkommandos
The ''Schutzstaffel'' (; ; SS; also stylised with SS runes as ''ᛋᛋ'') was a major paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It began with a small guard unit known as the ''Saal-Schutz'' ("Hall Security") made up of party volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed and given its final name. Under his direction (1929–1945) it grew from a small paramilitary formation during the Weimar Republic to one of the most powerful organisations in Nazi Germany. From the time of the Nazi Party's rise to power until the regime's collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, mass surveillance, and state terrorism within Germany and German-occupied Europe. The two main constituent groups were the ''Allgemeine SS'' (General SS) and ''Waffen-SS'' (Armed SS). The ''Allgemeine SS' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ad Hoc
''Ad hoc'' is a List of Latin phrases, Latin phrase meaning literally for this. In English language, English, it typically signifies a solution designed for a specific purpose, problem, or task rather than a Generalization, generalized solution adaptable to collateral instances (compare with ''a priori and a posteriori, a priori''). Common examples include ad hoc committees and commissions created at the national or international level for a specific task, and the term is often used to describe arbitration (ad hoc arbitration). In other fields, the term could refer to a military unit created under special circumstances (see ''task force''), a handcrafted network protocol (e.g., ad hoc network), a temporary collaboration among geographically-linked franchise locations (of a given national brand) to issue advertising coupons, or a purpose-specific equation in mathematics or science. Ad hoc can also function as an adjective describing temporary, provisional, or improvised methods ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Euphemism
A euphemism ( ) is when an expression that could offend or imply something unpleasant is replaced with one that is agreeable or inoffensive. Some euphemisms are intended to amuse, while others use bland, inoffensive terms for concepts that the user wishes to downplay. Euphemisms may be used to mask profanity or refer to Dysphemism#Taboo terms, topics some consider Word taboo, taboo such as mental or physical disability, sexual intercourse, bodily excretions, pain, violence, illness, or death in a polite way. Etymology ''Euphemism'' comes from the Greek language, Greek word () which refers to the use of 'words of good omen'; it is a compound of (), meaning 'good, well', and (), meaning 'prophetic speech; rumour, talk'. ''Eupheme (deity), Eupheme'' is a reference to the female Greek spirit of words of praise and positivity, etc. The term ''euphemism'' itself was used as a euphemism by the ancient Greeks; with the meaning "to keep a holy silence" (speaking well by not speaking at ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Death Camp
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe, primarily in occupied Poland, during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin 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. Additionally, camps operated by Nazi allies have also been described as extermination or death camps, most notably the Jasenovac concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia. The National Socialists made no secret of the existence of concentration camps as early as 1933, as they ser ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |