Sonderkommando

American  

[zon-der-kuh-man-doh, zawn-duhr-kaw-mahn-daw] / ˈzɒn dər kəˌmæn doʊ, ˈzɔn dər kɔˈmɑn dɔ /

noun

1. a group of prisoners assigned to collect belongings and dispose of the bodies of other prisoners who had died or been killed.

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Etymology

Origin of Sonderkommando

< German: special detachment, equivalent to sonder- separate, special + Kommando detachment, mission, command < Italian commando; command, commando

Example Sentences

But the clandestine pictures known as the Sonderkommando photographs carry the gravest weight of all.

From New York Times

Auschwitz’s Sonderkommando prisoner work units threw many bodies into open pits and burned them there.

From Seattle Times

"Chaim died in Auschwitz. He blew up the crematorium with his Sonderkommando group."

From Literature

Survival is the other great subject of “Shoah”; Lanzmann’s interviews include former members of the Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto and members of the Sonderkommando, Jewish captives in Auschwitz who were forced, on pain of death, to prepare other Jewish captives for murder—cutting their hair, leading them into the gas chamber, and then removing their corpses.

From The New Yorker

Survival was, for Lanzmann, an act of resistance, and members the Sonderkommando are present in the film as the closest witnesses, the ultimate resisters, of death itself.

From The New Yorker