The men of the Sonderkommando units are something I have previously written about. Today I would like to talk about the concept as a whole instead of the individual cases.
Some questions might come to mind when first learning about the Sonderkommando. First, why would a Jew help the SS men in the mass murder of their fellow Jews? Even if they were ‘forced’ they could just refuse. To be put to death with the others surely is preferable to being an accessory to genocide. Or perhaps you’re thinking, why would the orthodox Holocaust historians invent such a problematic story? It must be true, right? I will answer that question first.
There are no documents that order mass gassing or detail how the alleged mass gassing would have worked. There are no blueprints or plans for homicidal gas chambers, no instruction manuals, no safety precautions. None of the SS men that were caught after the war were a part of the alleged gassing operation. So how is one to get any sort of evidence about the gas chambers and how they worked? Enter the Sonderkommando. A team of unfortunate inmates that were ‘forced’ to help murder their fellow Jews who have intimate knowledge of the gassing process. Their testimony shapes, and also hinders, the narrative of alleged gas chambers.
Back to the first issue. Why did they do it? To explore this issue let’s look at an article from ‘The Times of Israel’ that just came out, Myths about Auschwitz Jewish ‘Sonderkommando,’ failed rebellion busted in new study. The question of why did they do it is brought up but it is worded in such a way as to make one believe that questioning the motives of the Sonderkommando is unacceptable. Don’t let such things gaslight you however, it is perfectly reasonable to wonder why a person would be a willing participant in the murder of their people.
A few paragraphs later we have this statement to cinch the idea that you have no moral authority to question these alleged victims. That is not the case though. The German people have been accused of one of the greatest crimes in history. What one doesn’t have is the moral authority to do is deny the open and honest discussion of this historical event though prohibitive laws, persecution and emotional manipulation.
This article also addresses a problem with the once accepted Sonderkommando narrative:
How did this ‘misleading stereotype’ come to be?
Jürgen Graf’s book, Auschwitz: Eyewitness Reports and Perpetrator Confessions of the Holocaust, will give us some answers. Here are two eyewitness accounts that testify to the liquidation of Sonderkommando:
This is allegedly from a letter by Sonderkommando, Chaim Herman, to his family.
Igor Bartosik is author of the book, Witnesses from the Pit of Hell, that the ‘Times of Israel’ article is about. According to him this witness testimony is a ‘misleading stereotype’. If what Bartosik asserts is true, under normal circumstances such misinformation from Miklós Nyiszli would render him as an unreliable witness and his testimony disregarded. The Holocaust isn’t a normal circumstance, however, it lives in it’s own bubble with it’s own rules. For instance, a survivor could have a story about how he was shot in the shoulder but it did not penetrate his skin and still have the rest of his testimony used in scholarly books. Holocaust testimony enjoys special privileges.
There is much more of this article to unpack, but in the interest of keeping posts short and sweet I will end it here. Follow this link to read part 2!