Free Republic

Henryk Mandelbaum, a member of the Sonderkommando -- Jewish prisoners who were forced to empty the gas chambers at Auschwitz after fellow Jews were gassed and burned -- died Tuesday. He was 85. Mandelbaum died at a hospital in the southern Polish city of Bytom several days after undergoing heart surgery, said Igor Bartosik, a historian at the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum who has co-written an upcoming book on Mandelbaum. Bartosik said he did not know the exact cause of death, and hospital officials refused to comment. Mandelbaum was Poland's last surviving member of the Sonderkommando, in which he was forced by...