When you think of the Holocaust, you probably recall the overwhelming horror already documented in countless histories. Yet there are still many sinister things the Nazis inflicted on camp inmates that rarely make the headlines. Below we dive into nine chilling practices that reveal just how far the regime pushed cruelty.
Sinister Things Exposed
9 Sonderkommanden
Simply put, a Sonderkommando was a prisoner forced to deal with the dead. Their grisly duties included extracting gold teeth from corpses and sweeping away the ashes left behind. Because they weren’t Nazis, they were ordinary inmates.
Their misery deepened because they were labeled “Geheimnisträger” (secret‑keepers), making them too dangerous to keep alive for long. They were routinely murdered and replaced every few months without warning, often having to dispose of the very person they were replacing.
8 The Trains
Moving thousands of people to the camps required a massive, horrifyingly efficient transport system. Although a single carriage was meant to hold about 50 passengers, it was not uncommon to cram more than 200 into one car.
Travelers received no food, water, or shelter from the elements, and many perished en route. One train that left Corfu took 18 days to arrive, and when the doors opened, every passenger inside had already died.
7 The Trains (Again)
How could the Nazis make the death trains even more dreadful? By charging victims for their passage. To reach an extermination camp, a Jewish person had to purchase a standard‑fare ticket.
Children under four were the only exception—the Nazis waived the fee for them, but everyone else paid for the privilege of being shipped to their doom.
6 The Music
The Nazis turned music into a weapon of psychological torture. Upon arrival, a prisoner‑made orchestra would blare upbeat tunes that inmates were forced to sing and march to as they headed toward death.
The orchestra kept playing even as gas chambers operated, though no amount of music could drown out the victims’ screams. Survivors carried the guilt of this twisted soundtrack for decades.
5 Human Soap
It was a widely spread myth that Nazis forced Jews to use soap made from the fat of Holocaust victims. No conclusive evidence ever proved the claim, yet the Nazis spread the story to break prisoners’ spirits.
In reality, the regime did experiment with making soap from human remains, but it was rarely, if ever, used on inmates.
4 Starvation And Dark Cells
Not every victim received a quick death; many were forced to stand in rooms without food or water until they died. Block 13 of Auschwitz became infamous for this method, and anyone who survived starvation was later killed another way.
Even worse were the “dark cells” – sealed chambers with no light, where occupants slowly suffocated as the limited oxygen was used up.
3 Lack Of Food
Daily rations for prisoners were pitiful: bread made from sawdust, sausage from emaciated horses, and tea brewed from weeds. Hunger drove inmates to steal food from the dead, and in extreme cases, some resorted to eating rotted garbage.
2 Lack Of Water
Among the many experiments, Dr. Hans Eppinger forced about 90 Gypsy inmates to drink only seawater to observe its effects. The result was severe dehydration; prisoners even licked freshly mopped floors for a single drop of fresh water.
1 The Experiments
The full scope of Nazi cruelty may never be known because many records were destroyed. Nonetheless, human experimentation was not only common—it was encouraged.
Prisoners were submerged in ice water to test hypothermia, injected with chemicals and poisons, sterilized, vivisected, and operated on without anesthesia. This list merely scratches the surface of their atrocities.