Remembering the heroes and the victims
Roza Robota hy"d
Ala Gertner hy"d
The Revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau
(October 7, 1944)
19-year-old Ester Wajcblum and her 14-year-old sister Hana arrived at Auschwitz in spring of 1943. They were assigned to work in the munitions factory where they met Regina Safirsztain and Ala Gertner, women engaged in resistance activities. Together with Roza Robota, who worked in the clothes depot, they began to smuggle gunpowder to the men in the adjoining camp, sometimes using bodies of friends that were en route to the Sonderkommando for disposal.
The Sonderkommando were Jewish prisoners who worked the death camps in return for special treatment and privileges. Every few months, the current sonderkommando was liquidated and the first task of their successors was to dispose of the bodies of the previous group. Since a sonderkommando usually comprised men from incoming transports, their second task often consisted of disposing of the bodies of their own families. The sonderkommando did not participate in the actual killing -- that was carried out by the Nazis. The sonderkommando duties included guiding the new arrivals into the gas chambers, removing the bodies afterwards, shaving hair, removing teeth, sorting through possessions (much of which they were given as reward), cremating the bodies, and disposing of the ashes. Their knowledge of the internal workings of the camp marked them for certain death. Someone selected for the sonderkommando had a choice: die then or die in four months time.
As the time of their execution grew nearer, the members of the 12th Sonderkommando crystallized their plans of revolt and escape. Besides the gunpowder being smuggled by the women, which the men fashioned into crude grenades using sardine tins, there were some small arms that had been slipped through the fence by local partisans. In addition, knives and small axes had been made and hidden throughout the crematoria. Much of the gunpowder was used in creating demolition charges. There was talk of a general uprising that would coincide with the arrival of the approaching Soviet armies, but some sonderkommando were certain that they would not live until that day.
On October 7th, 1944 , at about 3 in the afternoon, the Poles in Crematorium 1 begin the revolt. Hungarians in Crematoria 3 and 4 join in while the sonderkommando of Crematorium 2 break through the wires of the camp. An especially sadistic Nazi guard in Crematorium 1 is disarmed and stuffed into an oven to be burned alive. Small arms fire rattles from the second floor of the crematoria until the Germans bring in heavy machine guns and riddle the wooden roof.
The guards counterattack and penetrate the buildings, indiscriminately shooting at all prisoners they encounter. The sonderkommando in Crematorium 4 drag their demolition charges into the oven rooms and detonate them in a defiant suicide. The revolt is quickly suppressed and the escaped men recaptured with the help of local citizens. Approximately 200 sonderkommando are forced to lie face down outside the crematoria where they are executed with single shots to the back of the head. Some of the men are spared for interrogation, but the bodies of the 12th Sonderkommando are soon disposed of by the 13th Sonderkommando.
The men give up names, including those of some women who were engaged in smuggling gunpowder. Despite months of beatings and rape and electric shocks to their genitals, the only names given up by the women are those of already dead sonderkommando.
On January 5, 1945, the four women are hanged in front of the assembled women’s camp. Roza Robota shouts "Nekama" - "Revenge" and “Be strong and be brave” as the trapdoor drops.
Crematorium 4 was damaged beyond repair and never used again. On November 7th, 1944, the Nazis destroyed the gas chambers to hide their crimes. Twelve days after the hanging of the four women, the camp personnel forced 56,000 prisoners on a Death March into what remained of the Third Reich; 7,500 prisoners left behind were liberated by advancing Soviet armies on January 27th.
From: Two Years in the Hell of Auschwitz by Francis Irwin
I often wonder how I managed to live through Auschwitz. I know one reason is that I had a friend who saved my life. She worked in the Bekleidungskammer, which was where they took and sorted the belongings from the suitcases of people who came to Auschwitz thinking they were going to be resettled someplace where they could actually use the possessions from their old lives. Her job was to sort through the clothes and open up seams to find the money and jewelry that people had sewn into their clothes. This is something I knew about as my mother’s diamond had been hidden in the seam of my dress.
My friend’s name was Roza Robota. She came from Ciechanów in Poland and risked her life to bring me pieces of clothing to cover my feet because I kept losing my wooden shoes and had to walk around barefoot because my feet were very small and the shoes very big. Once your feet touched the limey soil in Auschwitz you could get trapped, like in quicksand, and she saved me from that.
One day there was a big explosion in Auschwitz. The alarm went off and the SS men were running all over. At first we hoped that this meant we were about to be liberated; then we were afraid that they were going to empty the camp and put us all in the gas chambers. We had the Appell early that day and they kept us in the barracks.
The next day we found out that an oven had been blown up—it is still visible in Auschwitz if you take a tour—and that four girls, including Roza Robota, had been arrested. The other three were Regina Safirsztajn, Ala Gertner and Ester Wajcblum. Ala, Regina and Ester worked in an ammunition factory not far from Auschwitz and smuggled in a little bit of dynamite every day. They gave the dynamite to Roza who left it in one spot near the Sonderkommando who picked it up and accumulated it until they could blow up one oven.
They reckoned that if one oven was out of commission perhaps they would gas fewer people because they would not be able to burn them. One German was killed and about a dozen were wounded. The oven did not operate anymore, so maybe a few lives were saved or were left to live a little longer. These women were extremely brave; they knew that if they were caught they would not only be killed, but also tortured. Even with the torturing, the four women never revealed any names because there were no other arrests. They were hanged before the entire camp on January 6, and I light memorial candles and say the Kaddish prayer in their memory every year on that day. Roza Robota was the most caring person who ever lived on this earth… and she had such a terrible death...
...The next day I was put to work sewing on buttons by hand for German uniforms.
Even now when I sew on a button it never falls off and my friends save their buttons for me to attach. As we worked we listened, and every time a bomber flew over us—we could tell the bombers because they made a heavier noise than other planes—we hoped that a bomb would hit the tracks so they could not bring in any more transports, but it never happened.