Sonderaktion 1005

Sonderaktion 1005
A Sonderkommando 1005 unit stand next to a bone crushing machine at Janowska concentration camp in 1943.
Also known as	Aktion 1005 or Enterdungsaktion (English: Exhumation action)
Location	Nazi-occupied Europe
Participants	Nazi Germany
Organizations	SS Police Battalions Sicherheitsdienst Trawnikis
Camp	Extermination camps Concentration camps Mass-killing sites in Eastern Europe.
Documentation	Nuremberg trials

The Sonderaktion 1005 (English: Special Action 1005), also called Aktion 1005, or Enterdungsaktion (English: Exhumation Action) began in May 1942 during World War II to hide any evidence that people had been murdered by Nazi Germany in Aktion Reinhard in occupied Poland. The operation, which was conducted in strict secrecy from 1942–1944, used prisoners to exhume mass graves and burn the bodies. These work groups were officially called Leichenkommandos ("corpse units") and were all part of Sonderkommando 1005; inmates were often put in chains in order to prevent escape.

In May 1943 the operation moved into occupied territories in Eastern Europe to destroy evidence of the Final Solution. Sonderaktion 1005 was used to conceal the evidence of massacres committed by SS-Einsatzgruppen Nazi death squads that had massacred millions of people including 1.3 million Jews according to Historian Raul Hillberg, as well as Roma and local civilians in Eastern Europe. The Aktion was overseen by selected squads from the Sicherheitsdienst and Ordnungspolizei.

In March 1942, SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich placed SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel in charge of the Aktion 1005. However its start was delayed after Heydrich was assassinated in June 1942 by Czechoslovakian SOE agents in Operation Anthropoid. It was after the end of June that SS-Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller, head of the Gestapo finally gave Blobel his orders. While the principal aim was to erase evidence of Jewish exterminations, the Aktion would also include non-Jewish victims of Nazi Einsatzgruppen.