Dario Gabbai
Encyclopedia
David Dario Gabbai is a Greek
Sephardi
Jew
and Holocaust survivor, notable for his role as a member of the Sonderkommando
at Auschwitz
. He was deported to the camp in March 1944 and put to work in one of the crematoria at Birkenau, where he was forced to assist in the burning of the hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews
that arrived during the spring and summer of that year.
Gabbai remained at Auschwitz until its evacuation in January 1945. He was liberated from Ebensee concentration camp
in Austria
by the United States Army
, and has publically spoken about what he witnessed and experienced during the the Holocaust
.
to a Greek mother and an Italian father, and was educated in Italian schools in Greece. At the age of 21 or 22 years old, Gabbai and his entire family were detained by the Nazis on March 24, 1944, and on April 1 they were sent to Auschwitz in cattle wagons. Ten days later, this transport arrived at the Judenrampe outside Auschwitz-Birkenau, where it faced the selection process. With the exception of Gabbai himself, his brother, and his two cousins, the entire family were selected for extermination and gassed the same day. Gabbai watched his parents being loaded onto the trucks that would take them to the crematoria and gas chambers.
Gabbai was registered into the camp as prisoner 182568. Gabbai and the three other young men were selected to be Sonderkommandos and quarantined in Block 13 (known as the Sonderkommando-Block) in the men's camp of Birkenau for approximately 1 month.
Gabbai's duties included helping the men, women and children selected for gassing to get undressed, moving their dead bodies out of the gas chamber onto an electric lift which would bring them up to the ground floor where the ovens were located, and loading the bodies into the muffles. While helping those selected to get undressed, one of the Sonderkommando members' duties was to maintain the pretence that they would merely be showered. Gabbai said that there were instances where the victims knew that something was suspicious of their fate, that "something was funny going on", but nothing could be done. On one instance, Gabbai recognized two of his friends from Thessaloniki, explained to them the reality of what was going to happen, and told them where to stand in the gas chamber so that they would be killed as quickly as possible. Gabbai heard children and their mothers crying and scratching the walls of the gas chamber as they died. Once the killing was over, the ventilation system extracted the gas, and then the door would be opened. Gabbai says that:
The operation to remove the bodies would then begin. Gabbai was given a pair of scissors and ordered to cut the hair off the women. Gabbai said he wailed "Where is God?" when cutting one woman's hair, as a sound emerged from her dead lips when he placed his foot on her belly. Gabbai and other Sonderkommando members would have to drag the bodies out of the gas chamber to the lift with a hooked cane. Once it was empty, they would then wash down the gas chamber with water hoses, as the floor and walls would be covered in blood and excrement. He would also have to turn the bodies in the muffles to ensure they burned evenly, and grind up the bones that would not disintegrate from cremation.
evacuated Auschwitz, and the few thousand inmates that could walk were filed out of the camp on a death march
. Gabbai states that it was snowing and the temperature was -23°C
(-9°F
), and that many died on route; in addition, those who could no longer keep up would be shot. Gabbai says he survived the cold with verbal affirmations; closing his eyes and repeating "beautiful Athens
in the sunshine" to himself. Gabbai and other prisoners were eventually put into open rail cars, and arrived in Austria
, where Gabbai was forced to work excavating tunnels. He was also made a prisoner at Ebensee concentration camp
, from which he was liberated by the U.S. 80th Infantry Division on May 6, 1945.
under the sponsorship of the Jewish community in Cleveland, and in 1951, relocated to California
. Gabbai is now retired, but visits the gym daily, which he describes as therapeutic: "When I'm sweating, everything goes away...my problems are over". He has compared the "lingering pain of what happened at Auschwitz to a virus that lies dormant [in him] until something triggers it", and said that there were moments when his Sonderkommando cohorts would have preferred to die, but then reconsidered, knowing that if they survived they would be able to tell the world what they witnessed. He has been described as a survivor who "combines incredible strength with a vulnerability and fragility that become apparent when he bears witness."
Gabbai features throughout Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution', a BBC
six-episode documentary film
series, and also makes an appearance in the 1998 Steven Spielberg Holocaust documentary, "The Last Days
".
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
Sephardi
Sephardi Jews
Sephardi Jews is a general term referring to the descendants of the Jews who lived in the Iberian Peninsula before their expulsion in the Spanish Inquisition. It can also refer to those who use a Sephardic style of liturgy or would otherwise define themselves in terms of the Jewish customs and...
Jew
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
and Holocaust survivor, notable for his role as a member of the Sonderkommando
Sonderkommando
Sonderkommandos were work units of Nazi death camp prisoners, composed almost entirely of Jews, who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the disposal of gas chamber victims during The Holocaust...
at Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
. He was deported to the camp in March 1944 and put to work in one of the crematoria at Birkenau, where he was forced to assist in the burning of the hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews
History of the Jews in Hungary
Hungarian Jews have existed since at least the 11th century. After struggling against discrimination throughout the Middle Ages, by the early 20th century the community grew to be 5% of Hungary's population , and were prominent in science, the arts and business...
that arrived during the spring and summer of that year.
Gabbai remained at Auschwitz until its evacuation in January 1945. He was liberated from Ebensee concentration camp
Ebensee concentration camp
The Ebensee concentration camp was established by the SS to build tunnels for armaments storage near the town of Ebensee, Austria in 1943. It was part of the Mauthausen network....
in Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
by the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
, and has publically spoken about what he witnessed and experienced during the the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
.
Deportation
Gabbai was born in ThessalonikiThessaloniki
Thessaloniki , historically also known as Thessalonica, Salonika or Salonica, is the second-largest city in Greece and the capital of the region of Central Macedonia as well as the capital of the Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace...
to a Greek mother and an Italian father, and was educated in Italian schools in Greece. At the age of 21 or 22 years old, Gabbai and his entire family were detained by the Nazis on March 24, 1944, and on April 1 they were sent to Auschwitz in cattle wagons. Ten days later, this transport arrived at the Judenrampe outside Auschwitz-Birkenau, where it faced the selection process. With the exception of Gabbai himself, his brother, and his two cousins, the entire family were selected for extermination and gassed the same day. Gabbai watched his parents being loaded onto the trucks that would take them to the crematoria and gas chambers.
Gabbai was registered into the camp as prisoner 182568. Gabbai and the three other young men were selected to be Sonderkommandos and quarantined in Block 13 (known as the Sonderkommando-Block) in the men's camp of Birkenau for approximately 1 month.
Sonderkommando work
Gabbai was taken to Crematorium II. As a member of the Sonderkommando, he found himself the closest to the extermination process. He states he was one of 35 Greek men selected for the Sonderkommando, and was with his cousins and brother the whole time.Gabbai's duties included helping the men, women and children selected for gassing to get undressed, moving their dead bodies out of the gas chamber onto an electric lift which would bring them up to the ground floor where the ovens were located, and loading the bodies into the muffles. While helping those selected to get undressed, one of the Sonderkommando members' duties was to maintain the pretence that they would merely be showered. Gabbai said that there were instances where the victims knew that something was suspicious of their fate, that "something was funny going on", but nothing could be done. On one instance, Gabbai recognized two of his friends from Thessaloniki, explained to them the reality of what was going to happen, and told them where to stand in the gas chamber so that they would be killed as quickly as possible. Gabbai heard children and their mothers crying and scratching the walls of the gas chamber as they died. Once the killing was over, the ventilation system extracted the gas, and then the door would be opened. Gabbai says that:
"When they opened the door...I see these people that half an hour before were going [into the gas chamber], I see them all standing up, some black and blue from the gas. No place where to go. Dead. If I see my eyes, the only thing I see is standing up, women with children in their hands."
The operation to remove the bodies would then begin. Gabbai was given a pair of scissors and ordered to cut the hair off the women. Gabbai said he wailed "Where is God?" when cutting one woman's hair, as a sound emerged from her dead lips when he placed his foot on her belly. Gabbai and other Sonderkommando members would have to drag the bodies out of the gas chamber to the lift with a hooked cane. Once it was empty, they would then wash down the gas chamber with water hoses, as the floor and walls would be covered in blood and excrement. He would also have to turn the bodies in the muffles to ensure they burned evenly, and grind up the bones that would not disintegrate from cremation.
Evacuation
Gabbai was a Sonderkommando member for eight and a half months, during which time he and the 950 other Sonderkommando members burned the bodies of the 600,000 gassed Jews that also arrived in that time, most of them Hungarian. On January 18, 1945, the SSSchutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
evacuated Auschwitz, and the few thousand inmates that could walk were filed out of the camp on a death march
Death marches (Holocaust)
The death marches refer to the forcible movement between Autumn 1944 and late April 1945 by Nazi Germany of thousands of prisoners from German concentration camps near the war front to camps inside Germany.-General:...
. Gabbai states that it was snowing and the temperature was -23°C
Celsius
Celsius is a scale and unit of measurement for temperature. It is named after the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius , who developed a similar temperature scale two years before his death...
(-9°F
Fahrenheit
Fahrenheit is the temperature scale proposed in 1724 by, and named after, the German physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit . Within this scale, the freezing of water into ice is defined at 32 degrees, while the boiling point of water is defined to be 212 degrees...
), and that many died on route; in addition, those who could no longer keep up would be shot. Gabbai says he survived the cold with verbal affirmations; closing his eyes and repeating "beautiful Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
in the sunshine" to himself. Gabbai and other prisoners were eventually put into open rail cars, and arrived in Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, where Gabbai was forced to work excavating tunnels. He was also made a prisoner at Ebensee concentration camp
Ebensee concentration camp
The Ebensee concentration camp was established by the SS to build tunnels for armaments storage near the town of Ebensee, Austria in 1943. It was part of the Mauthausen network....
, from which he was liberated by the U.S. 80th Infantry Division on May 6, 1945.
Post-war
At the end of the war, Gabbai was one of around 90 surviving Auschwitz Sonderkommando members. He moved to the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
under the sponsorship of the Jewish community in Cleveland, and in 1951, relocated to California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. Gabbai is now retired, but visits the gym daily, which he describes as therapeutic: "When I'm sweating, everything goes away...my problems are over". He has compared the "lingering pain of what happened at Auschwitz to a virus that lies dormant [in him] until something triggers it", and said that there were moments when his Sonderkommando cohorts would have preferred to die, but then reconsidered, knowing that if they survived they would be able to tell the world what they witnessed. He has been described as a survivor who "combines incredible strength with a vulnerability and fragility that become apparent when he bears witness."
Gabbai features throughout Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution', a BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
six-episode documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
series, and also makes an appearance in the 1998 Steven Spielberg Holocaust documentary, "The Last Days
The Last Days
The Last Days is a documentary, directed by James Moll and produced by June Beallor and Kenneth Lipper in 1998. Steven Spielberg was one of the executive producers, in his role as founder of the Shoah Foundation. The film tells the the stories of five Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust...
".