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The Sonderkommando-the "special squad" of enslaved Jewish laborers who were forced to work in the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz-Birkenau-comprise one of the most fascinating and troubling topics within Holocaust history. As eyewitnesses to and unwilling abettors of the murder of their fellow Jews, they are the object of fierce condemnation even today. Yet it was a group of these seemingly compromised men who carried out the revolt of October 7, 1944, one of the most celebrated acts of Holocaust resistance. This interdisciplinary collection assembles careful investigations into how the Sonderkommando have been represented-by themselves and by others-both during and after the Holocaust.
List of contents
List of Figures and Tables
Foreword Anne Karpf Acknowledgements
Note on Transliteration
Introduction: Testimonies of Resistance
Nicholas Chare and Dominic Williams Part I: Historical and Ethical Questions of Representation Chapter 1. Knowing Cruelty: The Negation of Death and Burial in SS Violence
Griselda Pollock Chapter 2. What Makes the Grey Zone Grey? Blurring Factual and Ethical Judgements of the Sonderkommando
Dominic Williams Part II: Witnessing from the Heart of Hell Chapter 3. Farewell Letter from the Crematorium: On the Authorship of the First Recorded 'Sonderkommando-Manuscript' and the Discovery of the Original Letter
Andreas Kilian Chapter 4. To Read the Illegible: Techniques of Multispectral Imaging and the Manuscripts of the Jewish Sonderkommando of Auschwitz-Birkenau
Pavel Polian and Aleksandr Nikityaev Chapter 5. 'Like a True Greek': The Last Will and Testimony of Marcel Natzari
K.E. Fleming Chapter 6. Disinterred Words: The Letters of Herman Strasfogel and Marcel Nadjary
Nicholas Chare, Ersy Contogouris and Dominic Williams Chapter 7. The Letter of Herman Strasfogel
Translated by Ersy Contogouris Chapter 8. The Letter of Marcel Nadjary
Translated by Ersy Contogouris Chapter 9. The Religious Life of Sonderkommando Members inside the Killing Installations in Auschwitz-Birkenau
Gideon Greif Part III: Retrospective Representations Chapter 10. Doubly Cursed: The Sonderkommando in the Documents of the International Tracing Service
Dan Stone Chapter 11. Enduring Witness: David Olère's Visual Testimony
Carol Zemel Chapter 12. The Sonderkommando and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum
Dominic Williams and Isabel Wollaston Chapter 13. Early and Late Testimonies of the Sonderkommando Survivors
Gideon Greif Chapter 14. From Special Operations Executive to Sonderkommando: Sebastian Faulks and the Anxiety of Invention
Sue Vice Chapter 15. Out of the Plan, Out of the Plane 2: Stripping, Fourth Letter to Gerhard Richter
Georges Didi-Huberman
Chapter 16. Greeks in the Birkenau Sonderkommando: Representation and Reality
Steven Bowman Part IV: Cinema and the Sonderkommando Chapter 17. 'We Did Something': Framing Resistance in Cinematic Depictions of the Sonderkommando
Barry Langford Chapter 18. 'We Can't Know What We're Capable Of ': Approaching the 'Grey Zone' in Holocaust Film
Adam Brown Chapter 19. The Sonderkommando on Screen
Philippe Mesnard Afterword: Tracing Topographies of Memory and Mourning
Victor Jeleniewski Seidler Index
About the author
Nicholas Chare is Associate Professor in the Department of History of Art and Film Studies at the Université de Montréal.
Dominic Williams is Senior Lecturer in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Northumbria University.
