WWII Nazi German Mess Hall fork unit marked to III.SS-T.V. and is maker marked to the reverse by Henckel Nicht Rostend. The fork measuring 8 inches long and in excellent condition. SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV; literally "Death's Head Units") was the SS organization responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps for Nazi Germany, among similar duties. While the Totenkopf (skull) was the universal cap badge of the SS, the SS-TV also wore the Death's Head insignia on the right collar tab to distinguish itself from other Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) formations. The SS-TV originally created in 1933 was an independent unit within the SS, with its own ranks and command structure. It ran the camps throughout Germany and later in occupied Europe. Camps in Germany included Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, and Buchenwald; camps elsewhere in Europe included Auschwitz-Birkenau in German occupied Poland and Mauthausen in Austria among the numerous other concentration camps, and death camps handled with the utmost of secrecy. The extermination camps' function was genocide; they included Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibór built specifically for Aktion Reinhard, as well as the original Chelmno extermination camp, and Majdanek which was fitted with mass killing facilities, along with Auschwitz. They were responsible for facilitating what the Nazis called the Final Solution, known since the war as the Holocaust;[4] perpetrated by the SS within the command structure of the Reich Main Security Office, subordinate to Heinrich Himmler, and the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office or WVHA. At the outbreak of World War II in Europe, the SS Division Totenkopf was formed from SS-TV personnel. It soon developed a reputation for brutality, participating in war crimes such as the Le Paradis massacre in 1940 during the Fall of France. On the Eastern Front, the mass shootings of Polish and Soviet civilians in Operation Barbarossa were the work of Einsatzgruppen mobile death squads and their subgroups called Einsatzkommando. These units were organized by Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich