Sonderkommando Resistance

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Between the bodies being removed from the gas chambers and being put into the crematorium, another group had to remove all valuables including hair and golden teeth. All the valuables had to be given to the SS officers standing by who often kept the gold for themselves and shipped the hair off to be put to good use. The fourth group, referred to as the “stokers,” then had the job of putting the corpses into the ovens and making sure they burned. This task was especially heinous because the men would have to witness the bodies move due to the high temperature but it made the person seem like they were still alive. The stokers became proficient in how the ovens worked which played to their advantage because they were usually left alive when the…show more content…
One of the biggest and most well known of the resistance efforts was the Sonderkommando revolt. As the transports started to slow down the men knew that the extermination was almost over and they would be next. For most of the men, they would rather die trying to fight back and die on their own accord than to be murdered like the rest of their people. This is when the planning of an uprising began. It was still very difficult for them to contact the outside world to coordinate with centers of resistance, but the members of the Sonderkommando were determined. As time went on they conspired with a few women from the female work camp to increase their supply of explosives and ammunition. The Sonderkommando was getting antsy, though, with the lack of movement from the resistance groups and when they found out that they would all be killed in a few days, they decided to act on their own. In October of 1944, the Sonderkommando decided to act. When a signal was given, the men in Crematorium III (IV) in Auschwitz began their final effort to resist the power of the Germans. They grabbed make-shift weapons and attacked the SS leaders while also setting off numerous hand grenades in the building. This set off a chain reaction for the rest of the Sonderkommando to act. The men knew that they would be killed for this or be killed by it and they were fine with that because at least they would die

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