Image: Members of a Sonderkommando 1005 unit pose next to a bone crushing machine in the Janowska concentration camp

Description: Members of the Sonderkommando 1005 unit pose next to a bone crushing machine in the Janowska concentration camp in a photo discovered by "a Soviet war crimes investigation team" called officially the "Extraordinary State Commission for ascertaining and investigating crimes perpetrated by the German–Fascist invaders and their accomplices". Soviet prosecutor Colonel Lev Smirnov testified in regards to the bone crushing before the Nuremberg Trails in February 1946 and submitted photos of the machines. According to Smirnov, "over 200 000 Soviet citizens" were exterminated at Janowska. In reality the victims were not Soviet. They were predominantly Polish Jews as well as members of other ethnic groups from the south-eastern territories of the prewar Second Polish Republic trapped in the Soviet occupation zone following the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. A bone crusher from Janowska and other items such as a bar of soap made from human fat and gloves of human skin produced in the camps can be seen in the Museum of the Great Patriotic War in Kiev
Title: Members of a Sonderkommando 1005 unit pose next to a bone crushing machine in the Janowska concentration camp
Credit: Jewish prisoners forced to work for a Sonderkommando 1005 unit pose next to a bone crushing machine in the Janowska concentration camp ushmm.org
Author: "SS officer" who had worked in Janowska concentration camp (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No