Inside the Gas Chambers; Eight Months in the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz

Cambridge UK: Polity Press, 2009. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xv,[3], 202, [4] pages. Illustrations (drawings and photographs). Footnotes. Plan of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Foreword by Simone Veil. Note by Beatrice Prasquier. Historical Notes by Marcello Pezzetti, Umberto Gentiloni, and Jean Mouttapa. Selected Bibliography. Published in Association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Shlomo Venezia (1923 - 2012) was a Greek-born Italian Jew. He was a survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Venezia was subjected to the typical procedure of the deported to Auschwitz: shave, shower, the tattooing of the number on the left forearm, wearing the interned uniform. At the end of the procedure Venezia was locked up in a separate and isolated section of the camp in quarantine. After quarantine Venezia was assigned to the Sonderkommando in Birkenau, made mainly prisoners in good physical condition, because of the physical effort that the job required. Venezia was part of the Sonderkommando for six months. A unique, participant's account of everyday death and life inside the engine of the Nazi extermination machine. Although most Sonderkommando members, too, were systematically killed by the SS, fate allowed Shlomo Venezia to survive and bear witness. This is a unique, eye-witness account of everyday life right at the heart of the Nazi extermination machine. When the Germans invaded, the Venezias were deported to Auschwitz. Given the chance to earn a little extra bread, he agreed to become a 'Sonderkommando', without realizing what this entailed. He soon found himself a member of the 'special unit' responsible for removing the corpses from the gas chambers and burning their bodies. Dispassionately, he details the grim round of daily tasks, evokes the terror inspired by the man in charge of the crematoria, 'Angel of Death' Otto Moll, and recounts the attempts made by some of the prisoners to escape, including the revolt of October 1944.