A ''Kommando'' (, "unit" or "command") is a general term for special police and military forces in German, Dutch, and Afrikaans speaking nations. It was also the term in the World War II era ''Luftwaffe'' for special units used to test new aircraft for combat readiness (as '' Erprobungskommando'' units) and examples existed that only used the "Kommando" name, such as the Luftwaffe ''Gruppe''-sized '' Kommando Nowotny''. In the winter/spring 1945 period, single-plane ''Kommando''-designated units that used the Arado Ar 234 ''Blitz'' jet powered reconnaissance-bomber operated from hidden, forest-lined runways in eastern Germany. Before and during World War II, the basic unit of organization of forced labourers in Nazi concentration camps, equivalent to a detail or detachment were referred to as ''Kommandos''. Among the most notable of such units were the

Sonderkommando ''Sonderkommandos'' (, ''special unit'') were work units made up of German Nazi death camp prisoners. They were composed of prisoners, usually Jews, who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the disposal of gas chamber vict ...

s (), carrying out the Final Solution by guarding the newly arrived inmates, escorting them to gas chambers, searching the bodies and burning them. '' Außenkommandos'' were external work details that were set up, either leaving from the concentration camp or from outside the camp boundary. In ''

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account'', concentration camp survivor Dr. Miklós Nyiszli (who served on Dr. Josef Mengele's medical kommando) describes the "tooth-pulling kommando". These teams of eight, all "fine stomatologists and dental surgeons" equipped "in one hand with a lever, and in the other a pair of pliers for extracting teeth", worked in the

crematoria Cremation is a method of final disposition of a dead body through burning. Cremation may serve as a funeral or post-funeral rite and as an alternative to burial. In some countries, including India and Nepal, cremation on an open-air pyre i ...

. Stationed in front of the ovens, their job was to pry open the mouths of prisoners who had been gassed and extract, or break off, "all gold teeth, as well as any gold bridgework and fillings". Other kommandos depended on the job they were assigned to, such as woodcutting kommandos, factory kommandos or kitchen kommandos.

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