The Sonderkommando: Coercion, complicity, and the “Grey Zone”
At the heart of this fascinating discussion with Dr Dominic Williams is a careful unpacking of who the Sonderkommando were and the moral terrain they were forced to inhabit. Dr Williams explains how these Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau were compelled to work in the crematoria; the roles included: removing bodies from gas chambers, burning them, and processing victims’ belongings. This was not simply a matter of camp administration; it was a system designed to exploit prisoners while inflicting profound psychological and moral torment. Dr Williams highlights that the work forced upon the Sonderkommando was not merely physically horrific but spiritually devastating. For example, the burning of bodies, which violated Jewish religious law. With this in mind, it must be appreciated that teaching this subject in a vacuum, without acknowledging the religious dimensions risks undermining the experience into shock value, rather than a broader cultural understanding of the layers of crimes committed by the National Socialist regime.
Drawing on Primo Levi’s concept of the “Grey Zone,” the interview explores how the Nazis deliberately forced victims into situations that blurred moral categories. Dr Williams refers to Primo Levi’s judgement that the creation of the Sonderkommando was ‘National Socialisms most demonic crime’ and stresses that the Sonderkommando were not collaborators, but victims subjected to a form of torture that violated religious law, personal morality, and human dignity. The story of the Sonderkommando is a vitally important element of holocaust historiography as their experience(s) challenges simplistic binaries of perpetrator and victim, compelling us to confront the ethical complexity at the core of genocidal systems.
Diversity, solidarity, and tension within the crematoria
Dr Williams highlights the remarkable diversity of the Sonderkommando. Far from being a homogenous group, they included Polish, Slovak, French, and Greek Jews, including religious figures such as Lejb Langfus, politically engaged individuals like Zalman Gradowski, and former soldiers such as Marcel Nadjari. Language, geography, and background shaped both their experiences and their internal relationships, adding to the importance of appreciating that the group were not ‘the same’.
Dr Williams discusses in depth about how the camp authorities kept the Sonderkommando physically isolated, often housing them within the crematoria complex itself. Part of this was due to pragmatism; the Sonderkommando had different duties in different areas, but part was also ensuring that the group were perceived as ‘separate’ from other prisoners, adding to their sense of isolation. Yet testimony reveals that their separation was never absolute: communication, exchanges of food or medicine, and shared information occurred between them and other prisoners. It is vital to understand, as Dr Williams explains, that while some early accounts expressed horror toward the group, later testimony, particularly that recorded by Hungarian survivors, often refrained from judging them. The picture that emerges is not one of universal condemnation, but of complexity: solidarity and tension coexisted under conditions designed to destroy trust and community.
Resistance through different forms
A central theme of this conversation is the concept of resistance. Dr Williams challenges narrow definitions by demonstrating that the Sonderkommando resisted in multiple ways. The armed uprising of 7 October 1944, when prisoners attacked guards and set fire to Crematorium IV, stands as one of the most dramatic acts of revolt within Auschwitz. Though ultimately crushed, it represented a refusal to submit passively to annihilation and challenges the assumption that Jewish prisoners went ‘like lambs to the slaughter’.
Equally powerful was cultural and documentary resistance. The clandestine manuscripts later known as the “Scrolls of Auschwitz,” written by figures such as Zalmen Gradowski and Zalmen Lewental, were buried near the crematoria in the hope that future generations would uncover the truth. These writings are not only factual records; they are literary, emotional, and profoundly human attempts to assert dignity in the face of systematic dehumanisation. Alongside the covert photographs taken in 1944 by the Greek member of the Sonderkommando, Alberto Errera, they form part of a deliberate effort to ‘bear witness’ from within the machinery of genocide itself.
In this conversation, Professor Williams demonstrates that the history of the Sonderkommando is not solely one of suffering, but also one of moral endurance, intellectual agency, and resistance, forcing us to rethink how we teach and remember one of the most difficult chapters of the Holocaust. Nonetheless, whilst the October 1944 uprising and the buried writings are powerful examples of resistance, Dr Williams cautions against framing the Sonderkommando primarily as ‘heroic resisters’. To do so risks imposing retrospective meaning on actions that were often desperate, fragmented, and undertaken without realistic hope of survival. Therefore, resistance, in this context, was complex and often improvised. It coexisted with exhaustion, coercion, fear, and moral injury. Presenting it as triumphant, pre-determined or strategically coherent can distort the historical reality.
This fascinating conversation makes a powerful case for why the Sonderkommando should have a place in Holocaust education. Their history challenges students to move beyond simplistic moral binaries of “good” and “evil,” introducing them to the ethical complexity described by Primo Levi as the “Grey Zone.” Exploring their experience helps students understand how genocidal systems deliberately engineered situations that forced victims into impossible moral positions.
However, as Dr Williams points out, there is also a broader warning here: graphic detail should never be used to provoke emotional reaction for its own sake. The manuscripts and photographs should be contextualised carefully, with attention to why they were created and what they were meant to communicate. Teaching the Sonderkommando is challenging, both academically and emotionally, however, when done well, it can therefore become an exercise in historical method; how we interpret fragmentary evidence, individual experiences, copied photographs, and survivor testimony recorded decades later, providing a lens and a rationale to help investigate the Holocaust as a whole.