Inside the gas chambers: eight months in the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz
| Author | Shlomo Venezia, Béatrice Prasquier |
| Publication information | Polity, 2009, 202 pages |
| Abbreviation | ISBN 0745643833 |
Narrative
This was an eye-witness account of life right at the heart of the Nazi extermination machine.
Slomo Venezia was born into a poor Jewish-Italian community living in Thessaloniki.
At first, the occupying Italians protected his family; but when the Germans invaded, the Venezias were deported to Auschwitz. His mother and sisters disappeared on arrival, and he learned that they had almost certainly been gassed.
Given the chance to earn a little extra bread, he agreed to become a Sonderkommando, not realizing what this entailed, until he became a member of the ‘special unit’ responsible for removing the corpses from the gas chambers and burning their bodies.
Slomo Venezia detailed the 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.