Sonderkommando Sonderkommandos were work units of Nazi death camp prisoners , composed almost entirely of Jews , who were forced , on threat of their own deaths , to aid with the disposal of gas chamber victims during The Holocaust . The death - camp Sonderkommando , who were always inmates , should not be confused with the " SS - Sonderkommandos " which were " ad hoc " units formed from various SS offices between 1938 through 1945 . 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 ) . Work and death . Sonderkommando members did not participate directly in killing ; that responsibility was reserved for the guards , while the Sonderkommandos ' primary responsibility was disposing of the corpse s . They were forced into the position ; in most cases they were inducted immediately upon arrival at the camp , and were not given any advance notice of the tasks they would have to perform . They had no way to refuse or resign other than by committing suicide . Because the Germans needed the Sonderkommandos to remain physically able , they were granted much less squalid living conditions than other inmates : they slept in their own barracks , which more than any other in the camp resembled normal human dwellings ; they were allowed to keep and use various goods such as food , medicines and cigarettes brought by those who were sent to the gas chambers ; and , unlike ordinary inmates , they were not subject to arbitrary , random killing by guards . As a result , Sonderkommando members tended to survive longer than other inmates of the death camps — but few survived the war . Because of their intimate knowledge of the process of Nazi mass murder , the Sonderkommando were considered " Geheimnisträger " — bearers of secrets — and as such , they were kept in isolation from other camp inmates , except , of course , for those about to enter the gas chambers . Since the Nazis did not want Sonderkommandos ' knowledge to reach the outside world , they followed a policy of regularly gassing almost all the Sonderkommando and replacing them with new arrivals at intervals of approximately 4 months ; the first task of the new Sonderkommandos would be to dispose of their predecessors ' corpses . Therefore since the inception of the Sonderkommando through to the liquidation of the camp there existed approximately 14 generations of Sonderkommando . There was a revolt by Sonderkommandos at Auschwitz in which one of the crematoria was partly destroyed . For months , young Jewish women , like Ester Wajcblum , Ala Gertner , and Regina Safirsztain , had been smuggling small amounts of gunpowder from the Weichsel - Union - Metallwerke , a munitions factory within the Auschwitz complex , to men and women in the camp ' s resistance movement , like Roza Robota , a young Jewish woman who worked in the clothing detail at Birkenau . Under constant guard , the women in the factory took small amounts of the gunpowder , wrapped it in bits of cloth or paper , hid it on their bodies , and then passed it along the smuggling chain . Once she received the gunpowder , Robota passed it to her co - conspirators in the Sonderkommando . Using this gunpowder , the leaders of the Sonderkommando planned to destroy the gas chambers and crematoria , and launch the uprising . When the camp resistance warned the Sonderkommando that they were due to be murdered on the morning of 7 October 1944 , the Sonderkommando attacked the SS and Kapos with two machine guns , axes , knives and grenades . Over 70 SS men were killed , including two who were pushed alive into a crematorium oven after being stabbed by a member of the Sonderkommando . Some of the Sonderkommando escaped from the camp for a period , as was planned , however they were recaptured later the same day . Of those who didn ' t die in the uprising itself , 200 were later forced to strip , lie face down , and then were shot in the back of the head . A total of 451 Sonderkommandos were killed on this day . There was also an uprising in Treblinka on 2 August 1943 , in which around 100 prisoners succeeded in breaking out of the camp , and a similar uprising in Sobibor on 14 October 1943 . The uprising in Sobibor was dramatized in the film , " Escape from Sobibor " . The Sonderkommando in Sobibor ' s Camp III did not take part in the uprising in Camp I , but were murdered the following day . Sobibor and Treblinka were closed shortly afterwards . Fewer than twenty out of several thousand members of the special squads are documented to have survived until liberation and were able to testify to the events ( although some sources claim more ) , among them : Henryk ( Tauber ) Fuchsbrunner , Filip Müller , Daniel Behnnamias , Dario Gabbai , Morris Venezia , Shlomo Venezia , Alter Fajnzylberg , Abram Dragon , David Olère , Henryk Mandelbaum , Martin Gray . There have been at most another six or seven confirmed to have survived , but who have not given witness ( or at least , such testimony is not documented ) . Buried and hidden accounts by members of the Sonderkommando were also later found at some camps . Testimonies . In the collection at Yad Vashem , the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem , Israel , there are notes from members of Sonderkommandos . The following note was found buried in the Auschwitz crematoria and was written by Zalman Gradowski , a member of the Sonderkommandos who was killed in 7 October 1944 revolt : " " Dear finder of these notes , I have one request of you , which is , in fact , the practical objective for my writing . . . that my days of Hell , that my hopeless tomorrow will find a purpose in the future . I am transmitting only a part of what happened in the Birkenau - Auschwitz Hell . You will realize what reality looked like . . . From all this you will have a picture of how our people perished . " " Further reading . There are several eyewitness accounts from members of the Sonderkommando . Publications include :