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LOT 52:
ID Pendant for a Jew in the Sonderkommando Unit of the Stutthof Death Camp
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Sold for: $280
Start price:
$
250
Estimated price :
$400 - $500
Buyer's Premium: 22%
VAT: 17%
On commission only
Users from foreign countries may be exempted from tax payments, according to the relevant tax regulations
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ID Pendant for a Jew in the Sonderkommando Unit of the Stutthof Death Camp
ID pendant for a Jew in the Sonderkommando unit of the Stutthof death camp. The front bears his personal number: 396 and the inscription "Stutthof Block A" with a swastika on top. Star of David on the reverse. Rare.
The Sonderkommando special unit was the unit which dealt with the casualties of the destruction in the gas chambers. The Jews worked in this unit by forced labor, and their job was to remove the corpses from the gas chambers and to burn them in the crematoria. After functioning a number of months, the members of the Sonderkommando itself were executed and their corpses were removed by the next unit in turn. The swastika symbol on the pendant marked them as "workers" in the service of the Nazis. The star of David on the reverse identified the worker as Jewish. Historian Hermann Langbein wrote "By order of Adolf Eichmann, most of the Sonderkommando personnel were executed after each perpetration of execution, because they were aware of Nazi secrets." The situation of the Sonderkommando personnel was incomparably better than the rest of the inmates, as testified to by a survivor of Auschwitz and member of the Sonderkommando, Josef Zacker: "We knew no lack - whether in clothing, food nor sleep. We did not suffer from starvation or lack of sleep, we had clothing and shoes for the duration. Clearly, only we, the Sonderkommando, received these benefits, the rest of the prisoners could only dream of them. The conditions in our block were exceptional. We had bathtubs in the crematoria and in our camp blocks. In the crematorium, there was a bathtub in the residential floor. We also had bathrooms in the block."
For the six years of the existence of the Stutthof concentration camp, which was located east of Danzig, near the city of Stutthof, approximately 110,000 people were imprisoned, of which 85,000 were killed. Gas chambers and crematoria were built in the camp in 1943 in order to begin mass executions, as Stutthof was included in the "final solution" of June 1944.
Diameter: 3.2 cm. Rust stains. Fine condition.
