How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #10
Last month one of the crematoriums at Birkenau had been blown up. None of us knows (and perhaps no one will ever know) exactly how the exploit was carried out: there was talk of the Sonderkommando, the Special Kommando attached to the gas chambers and the ovens, which is itself periodically exterminated, and which is kept scrupulously segregated from the rest of the camp. The fact remains that a few hundred men at Birkenau, helpless and exhausted slaves like ourselves, had found in themselves the strength to act, to mature the fruits of their hatred. (16.16).
This Sonderkommando revolt happened at Auschwitz, on October 7, 1944. The Sonderkommando were Jewish prisoners arbitrarily assigned to work in the gas chambers and crematoriums. These jobs forced them to directly witness the Nazi killing machine at the death camps like Birkenau. So they wouldn't tell the other prisoners about what was happening, the Sonderkommando were periodically themselves killed and others took their place. Why might it make sense that they would undertake such an uprising, when none of the other prisoners of Auschwitz did so? What might make someone choose to sacrifice himself?