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| Rosa Robata in the Hashomer Hatzair Zionist youth movement in
Ciechanow. 1930 |
In honor of women's history month we are profiling women in the Holocaust:
By early fall of 1944, Auschwitz was the only killing center
still in operation and Soviet troops had moved deep into German-occupied
Poland. On the one hand, this was good news for the prisoners of Auschwitz
because it meant that they might soon be liberated. On the other hand, it put
their lives at even greater peril; they knew it was unlikely that the Nazis
would leave them alive to be liberated.
During late summer and fall, young Jewish women, such as Ester
Wajcblum, Ella Gärtner, and Regina Safirsztain, began smuggling small amounts
of gunpowder out of the munitions plant where they worked within the Auschwitz
complex. The women hid the gunpowder inside their clothes until they had it out
of the factory and could pass it along the smuggling chain. Eventually the
gunpowder was transferred to Roza Robota who then gave it to co-conspirators in
the men’s camp at Auschwitz. The Sonderkommando,
the special squad of prisoners forced to work in the crematoria, planned to use
the gunpowder to blow-up the gas chambers and crematoria and launch an
uprising.
On 7 October 1944 the Sonderkommando
at Crematorium IV rose in revolt; they attacked the SS guards with hammers,
axes, and stones. Then the men demolished the crematorium with the smuggled
explosives. When they saw the smoke, the Sonderkommando
at Crematorium II went into action, killing a Kapo and several SS guards. Several hundred prisoners escaped from
Birkenau; however, almost all were caught and captured. Later that day, a
couple hundred other prisoners who took part in the revolt were also executed.
Of course the Nazis investigated the incident. On 9 October
1944, they arrested Ester Wajcblum, Ella Gärtner, and Regina Safirsztain. The
next day they arrested Roza Robota. All of the women were
brutally tortured, but none of the four betrayed their associates. In an effort
to quell further resistance, the women were publicly hanged. The Nazis’ efforts
backfired, however. Just as the trapdoor opened, Robota yelled “Nekama!” (“Revenge!”) to the crowd.
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| Rosa Robata the Hashomer Hatzair Zionist youth movement in
Ciechanow, Poland. 1937 |
Bibliography:
The Holocaust Chronicle: A History in Words
and Pictures. Lincolnwood, IL: Publications International, Ltd., 2000.
Print.
Asking students to think about what resistance
entails when teaching about the Holocaust is an important topic. While people might think of armed rebellion
as the only form of true resistance, resistance goes much deeper than that. 
