Inside the Gas Chambers: Eight Months in the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz Shlomo Venezia This is a unique, participant's account of everyday death and lifeinside the engine of the Nazi extermination machine. Shlomo Venezia was born into a poor Jewish-Italian community of Thessaloniki, Greece. Early in World War II, occupying Italian authorities provided a measure of protection for his family, but when the Germans took control, the Venezias were deported to Auschwitz. His mother and sisters disappeared on arrival, and he learned, at first with disbelief, that they had almost certainly been gassed. Given the chance to earn a little extra bread, he agreed to become a member of the ‘Sonderkommando’, without realising what that entailed. He soon found himself one of the group of ‘special unit’ inmates compelled by the Germans to serve as auxiliaries to the extermination; they directed the victims into the gas chambers, removed the bodies, "mined" the cadavers for valuables, transported the remains to the crematoria and burned the corpses. They bought each day of their own lives with these compromises and more. Dispassionately, he details the grim round of daily tasks, evokes the terror inspired by the sadistic SS man in charge of the crematoria, and recounts some of the prisoners' attempts to escape and to resist. It is usual to imagine that none of those who went into the gas chambers at Auschwitz ever emerged to tell their tale. Most Sonderkommando too, were systematically killed by the SS. But fate allowed Shlomo Venezia to survive, and the horrific privilege to bear witness. This is his story. Shlomo Venezia : Originally from the Jewish-Italian community of Thessaloniki, Shlomo Venezia was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau when he was twenty years old and enrolled in the Sonderkommando, of which he was one of the few to survive. These special teams were employed by the SS to empty the gas chambers and to burn the victims' bodies, before being eliminated in their turn after several months.