1945. As the new year breaks in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the months-long SS torture of four women --
Ala Gertner,
Roza Robota,
Regina Safirzstain and
Ester Wajcblum -- draws to an end. The women were being interrogated about their role in the
Sonderkommando revolt of October, 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 ("Special Unit') 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 7, 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 "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 56000 prisoners on a
Death March into what remained of the Third Reich; 7500 prisoners left behind were liberated by advancing Soviet armies on January 27th.
Anna Heilman, nee Hana Wajcblum, unindicted co-conspirator, survived the Warsaw Ghetto, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and the Death March and lives in Ottowa.
(I've provided many links to what seem to be the same story. Careful reading of those links -- and others available via Google -- shows that there is much disagreement on the details of the Sonderkommando Revolt and about the four women, including some claims that Roza Robota was executed in 1944 and that Ala Gertner was the one who gave up the names of the other women. I've supplied the details that seem to have more corroboration than others, but I could easily be wrong. The salient facts are in every narration, however: there was a revolt by the 12th Sonderkommando and that several women involved in the conspiracy endured months of torture rather than betray their companions. That's what this post is meant to commemorate. A fictionalized account of the revolt is presented in the movie
The Grey Zone; it depicts the role of the sonderkommando fairly well and is somewhat true to the details of the revolt (minus the appearance of the young girl) but fails in its presentation of the four women.)
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posted by forrest at 10:20 PM on January 4