German] Special work squad, usually workers in the crematoria
"Special command" or "Corpse Commando" - the term given to prisoners who were forced to work in the gas chambers, undressing rooms and crematoria.
Meaning special command, this was a name given to those forced under death threats to work in the crematoria, gas chambers, and undressing rooms.
a special commander in charge of the SS units which carried out exterminations, disposed of dead bodies and erased traces of mass murder.
A German word meaning "special detail." The term was used by the Nazis to refer to those prisoners in the death camps who were assigned to remove the bodies from the gas chambers and put them in the crematoria to be burned.
Special units of prisoners given the duty of transporting bodies from the gas chambers to the crematoria and cleaning out the crematoria ovens. Each unit lasted a few months and was then killed.
German word for "special squad." In the context of extermination camps, it refers to units of Jewish prisoners forced to take away bodies of gassed inmates, often members of their own families, to be cremated and to remove gold fillings and hair. They were always destined to be killed themselves when their bodies wore out from their labors.
Jewish slave labor units in extermination camps that removed the bodies of those gassed for cremation or burial.
"Special commandos": Prisoners in the death camps charged with dealing with the corpses of their fellow inmates, i.e. removing gold teeth and shaving off the hair for use by the Reich
Sonderkommandos were work units of Nazi death camp prisoners forced to aid the killing process. 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. Einsatzgruppen).
