page_title: Sonderkommando
section_title: Death
hierarchical_section_title: Sonderkommando / What did the Sonderkommando do? / Death
caption_attribution_description: English: Sonderkommando Henryk Mandelbaum &amp; translator
context_page_description: Sonderkommandos were special work groups made up of prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. They worked in and around the gas chambers, which the Nazis used to murder many people.
context_section_description: Because they knew so much about how the Nazis were killing so many people, the Nazis thought of the Sonderkommando as Geheimnisträger — people who knew secrets.  Because of this, they were kept apart from other prisoners in the camps.  The Nazis also did not want anyone outside the camps to know what they were doing.  To make sure the Sonderkommando could never tell what they knew, the Nazis would regularly kill all of the Sonderkommando, usually about every 3 months.  Then they would choose a new group out of new prisoners just getting to the camps.  The new group's first job would be to burn the bodies of the old Sonderkommandos.
caption: Henryk Mandelbaum and an interpreter talk on the site of Birkenau's crematoria.  He was a member of the camp's Sonderkommandos.
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